The Empty Room
by Inkpot satsuma
Summary: "Sherlock," Mycroft spoke in a steady voice. "I am going to be killed soon. And in case I fail to prevent this outcome, I want the two of you to investigate the matter most thoroughly of all." Sherlock/Irene, follow-up to "The Case of Integrity".
1. Not a coward

**Whew! I'm sorry this first chapter took so long to cook, it was hard...**

**Right-o, the sequel is launched at last, I've been dying to write this fic for a long time! I recently realised that Mycroft is a character taken for granted by other characters as well as by many of us fans. And I don't mean in a bad way - I mean that it's understood that he will always be there, up in power and with his brilliantly snide remarks. That's certainly how Sherlock seems to see it, and I thought to do something with it. So in this story Mycroft gets a lot of attention and some love from moi :D Behold - character study, relationships study... well, generally a lot of study.**

**I hope you like it. Majority of this chapter was fiendishly difficult to write.**

**Reviews are the highlight of my day :D**

* * *

**1. Not a coward**

John hopped up the steps to 221 B, his already good mood increasing with each bounce – it felt damn good to be able to hop again. Between Sherlock's return from the dead almost a year ago, and things going well with Mary, his limp had disappeared. It seemed the annoying genius was right yet again, and the injury had been psychosomatic – though the said annoying genius' dramatic death certainly worsened its condition, at the time.

He still couldn't think about Sherlock's suicide without a dizzying, sick feeling in his stomach and throat, so he hurriedly chased the subject away. He hoped for a fun evening – well, as much fun as Sherlock can be in the average meaning of the word. Mary's boss sent her to Manchester for three days again, so John decided to spend the evening with Sherlock and make sure he hadn't done anything self-injurious or didn't destroy the flat completely, or conduct an experiment that was considered a legal offense.

It had been three months since Irene left, and while they obviously remained in touch, Sherlock was gradually (and recently increasingly abruptly) spiralling down the well of destructive boredom. He'd started off with an experiment that caused all of Mrs Hudson's flowers to die and rot, then almost poisoned his next door neighbour's cat ("I was merely testing an anaesthetic, the dose was very carefully measured, no actual risk was involved…!"), tested his violin for tunes that made people's eardrums bleed, and lately he progressed to extensive body parts experiments, often running two or three at the same time. More or less halfway through the third month, John had called Irene, begging her to come back and for goodness sake _do something_, but she claimed she still had business to attend to and couldn't come. In all honesty though, if she was only saying that because she wanted to stay away from Sherlock for a bit longer, John wouldn't blame her. Not that it was likely, she actually seemed to enjoy him when he was being impossible.

So, he hoped to wrench Sherlock away from the destructiveness and actually do something fun – maybe he'd even volunteer to play Cluedo, if things got desperate enough. And, in all truthfulness, Sherlock was always fun – even when he wasn't.

After all those thoughts, it was a surprise for John when he went into the living room and wasn't struck with anything on entering – either stench or object. While the room would never be tidy under Sherlock's reign, it sure was a darn better sight than he expected it to be – no body parts, no stains – no harpoons – and no chemical experiments bubbling precariously unattended.

"Sherlock, I'm here…!" he announced himself inattentively, and moved to inspect the kitchen. Another shocker inside the fridge – food (though not so much of it, and some of it expired) instead of severed heads or that grotesque jar of thumbs that he found there two days ago. "Thought you might wanna go out tonight…" he carried on, walking back to the living room where he found the detective exiting his bedroom.

"Hmm, can't. Don't want to," he said, buttoning the cuff of his shirt.

John narrowed his eyes, taking in Sherlock's tidy appearance – he always was one for spotless look when not engaging in some dirty work, but there was something more. And combined with the state of the flat, the change unprompted by anything he could see here, this certainly had to mean something…

Sherlock frowned a little, a small, playful look appearing in his eyes.

"What?" he asked in response to Jon's suspicious look.

"You've de-rubbished the flat," John said slowly.

"A very sound observation, though 'rubbish' is perhaps a somewhat ill-fitted term."

"Shut up, shut up, this is my _cheekbones_ moment," John raised a finger and pointed it at his best mate. "So – clean-ish flat, the purple shirt, two top buttons undone… _and_… you threw out the thumbs," everything clicked, and he snapped his fingers in realisation. "Irene is coming!"

Sherlock frowned again, leaning back a little, narrowing his eyes, before lifting an eyebrow.

"Very well, you've developed considerable deductive powers of your own, John," he finally said with a small smirk, and John couldn't resist the opportunity to give him a look full of satisfaction.

"Yeah, well, you talk about those signs all the time, and you wear the signs just like everyone else, Sherlock. Things can be deduced from your appearance, too."

"I never said they couldn't. So I hope you went further with your deductions and know by now that I certainly can't go out with you tonight. Though if you like, you can join Irene and I for a while."

"Boy, I hope you mean just for a chat," John murmured, trying hard not to allow some _highly_disturbing images into his brain.

Sherlock rolled his eyes with a scowl, and didn't even dignify the remark with a response. Better that way, actually, John supposed.

"It's good that she's coming," he tried to prod on the conversation while Sherlock tinkered with the fireplace – apparently, Irene liked it on a cold evening, and John very carefully avoided the temptation of making a remark on that, knowing all too well it could send Sherlock off into a fit of sulking fury or furious sulking. "Mrs Hudson will be ecstatic."

"Why? They're not _that_ good friends," Sherlock frowned in puzzlement.

"No, but she likes her anyway – she says she's a lovely girl and such a nice match for you," this time, John didn't deny himself the pleasure, and watched the horrific scowl shape Sherlock's face. Some of his usually warm feelings for his landlady certainly ebbed for the moment. "And, with Irene here, she doesn't have to worry so much about you blowing up the flat, does she?"

"And why would that be?" Sherlock spitefully crossed his arms over his chest.

"Well, you're more concentrated on Irene than experiments when she's with you. And for one thing – you'd never blow up the flat with Irene in it," John gave a small smile, enjoying his clever moment as Sherlock frowned, pondering over the truth that he just was told. Oh, yes, such, a nice sight and a nice moment…

"Yes, well," Sherlock cleared his throat. "I went through a great deal of trouble to ensure she was not beheaded, it would be a shame to waste it all, however magnificently," he evaded, and moved to the table.

Halfway through, he stopped, with his listening expression on his face, and John followed his intense, focused look towards the door. When he briefly looked back towards Sherlock, he noticed a vibrant flicker in his blue eyes and the smallest curl of lips into an anticipatory smile, and he knew Irene was on the way.

Sure enough, just a moment later he too heard the footsteps, and the door was pushed open to reveal The Woman.

There was no ceremony or any grand moment or anything. She just walked in, as if she was missing for just a few days, or even just a few hours, or was coming back from an errand, and if it wasn't for the small suitcase she parked near the door, John would almost believe that impression.

She walked over to Sherlock in a straight line, a small smile playing about her lips, but her eyes mirrored the tension that he could see in the detective's – the same sort of tension that always made him feel uncomfortable, out of place and frustratingly confused and definitely, _definitely_ very awkward. When they fell into that thick tension, it felt as if the whole damn room was about to burst into flames, or that they would both spontaneously combust – literally or figuratively, and John certainly didn't want to be around for the latter.

"Hello, dear," Irene purred as she almost crashed against Sherlock, stopping at the very last moment, throwing one arm around his neck, while his arm went around her waist almost on its own.

After that, John sighed, looking away, as he by no means was willing to see Sherlock and Irene give each other dental inspections with their tongues. Sherlock always got off on making people around him uncomfortable, though until Irene came, he used to do it only with his brain, while Irene… Irene never allowed anyone in her company to relax completely. He wondered if Sherlock enjoyed it – probably yes, the adrenaline addict…

Finally, they pulled away, and John felt like breathing again.

"Happy birthday," Irene added, brushing her fingertips under Sherlock's chin, and stepped away, walking back towards her suitcase.

Sherlock frowned, mildly confused again.

"My birthday was last Friday. I got your text."

"Well, yes, but I wanted to say it in person," Irene wheeled the suitcase into the bedroom, disappearing for a moment. "I'll make you a special dinner as a present."

"O-kay, I'm leaving!" John said, all too well aware of the euphemism. Damn, no one could say 'dinner' around him anymore without stirring up a reaction of discomfort.

Irene laughed, emerging from the bedroom.

"I meant some gourmet takeout," she informed him. Then, her eyes gleamed, and a wicked smile stretched across her lips. "But _that's_ not off the menu either."

"So, hmm, how was your flight?" John undertook an attempt to steer the conversation away from the major sea of awkwardness.

Beside him, Sherlock scoffed with his trademark singular chuckle of superiority – of course, he already probably knew every single minute of Irene's flight, by the look of her fingers, shoe tips and stuff like that. And naturally, he would be keen to show off to his girlfriend (yes, girlfriend), though he should be careful about that – as he himself had admitted, he had significant problems in reading her. But, on the other hand, that would make him all the more eager to flash some improvement.

Sherlock was hopeless when it came to spotlight.

"Oh, John, isn't that obvious?" he now asked, and John nodded to himself, resignedly knowing what was to come. "She's flown business class, sat next to the window, had two glasses of champagne – not the quality they were supposed to deliver though – didn't sleep during flight at all, and read a newspaper. How right am I?" he turned to Irene, hands behind his back, smugly assured expression on his face.

Irene gave a sideways nod, her face saying she wasn't overly impressed. Poor Sherlock's ego.

"Not as much as you should… it was platinum class, one glass of champagne, and you left out the bothersome crying baby three seats behind me."

"Oh, yes of course…" Sherlock murmured quietly and almost absently, sweeping over her with his analytic gaze. "There's always something…" he added pensively. "Especially with you," the frankness surprised John, while Irene only smiled radiantly.

"So, how did you know the things you got right?" John couldn't help but ask. Reading Irene Adler was a sort of higher accomplishment for Sherlock (hell, for anyone!), so he was hoping for something interesting.

"She had her nails done," Sherlock took Irene's left hand and demonstrated, as if handling a piece of evidence rather than a body part of a living woman – The Woman, mind. "The directionality of the way the colour was applied indicates it was done by someone else, not by her. The layer is fresh, and so is the edge of her nails, just filed. So – where could she have had her nails done within recent hours? On the plane, and business class features cosmetic services among its treats, though apparently platinum does as well, so it was a fair guess… There's a smudge of ink on her thumb, rather dark, darker than from a book, newspapers stain more, especially when fresh, so it was a fresh morning paper, another service from the airline, apparently. She sat near the window – and had it on her right side – because she has a vague reddened mark on her elbow, from resting it against the ledge. And I know she didn't sleep because she never sleeps on planes, so that was a bit of a cheat…" he smirked.

"Right, right…" John nodded while Irene blew Sherlock a delighted kiss. "And the champagne?"

"I tasted it."

"Oh, Sherlock!" cried out John with a scowl.

"It's a fair method of examination and assessment," Sherlock shrugged, and John rolled his eyes with a dismissive wave of hand – he's never going to out-talk him.

"I hope you reserve it just for me, though," Irene arched an eyebrow in a playful warning.

Sherlock responded with a brief smirk.

"Naturally."

"So, John," Irene sat down comfortably on the sofa and slipped off her high heels. "Tell me – did he misbehave?"

* * *

"Sir?" Anthea's voice was smooth and vague, so ideally matching her entire appearance.

Mycroft lifted his gaze from over a frankly unimportant paperwork to which he admittedly escaped. The recent developments and continually tightening spiral of entrapment left him actually yearning for unimportant work that he would previously scowl at, but see to anyway, as he preferred everything to be in absolute order. Not that it helped, as he now bitterly was finding out… keeping everything in order was by no means a guarantee of safety. Valuable lesson. Shame it was too late for it now. Maybe he would at least manage to pass it on to Sherlock… who wouldn't listen. Horrible thing, a wasted wisdom.

He looked at Anthea, taking a moment to observe her. She was a remarkably beautiful woman, objectively speaking. Smooth curves, chocolate hair tumbling in buoyant waves down onto her shoulders, large brown eyes, flawless face – yes, beautiful. But to him, at rare moments such as these, she was gorgeous – to use an unrestrained word. Because those eyes were so perfectly empty and vague, without even a shadow of any sort of concentration, her smile plain, her demeanour absentminded and simple. And this was the most outstanding and beautiful camouflage he'd ever encountered. Like he said – gorgeous. The most perfect disguise. It certainly deserved such a praise.

"Yes?" he asked back now, watching her as she did something on her phone.

"She's arrived. You wanted to be informed as soon as she reaches 221."

Mycroft nodded slowly. The Woman's arrival to his little brother's abode was a slightly better news this time than it usually was, but simultaneously it came burdened with the feeling of ultimate submission to the inevitable. The inevitable he'd spent such a long time and such an amount of effort trying to somehow avoid… All those attempts and efforts – all of them for nothing. Depressing.

"Good. I'll give them some time to… _catch up_," he scowled. "I'll go see them tomorrow evening."

Anthea nodded, her attention again ebbing towards her phone's screen, and he almost smiled at how perfectly believable her lack of focus was. She kept up her game around him because she knew it amused him, and he responded in kind, their exchanges turning into an established act between them, a play they played just for themselves and each other. It was their version of a sense of humour.

"One more thing," he said slowly, and she looked up at him – with eyes the colour of coffee, her gaze should be predisposed for intensity, and yet she managed to keep it blank and misty. "The keylogger in Harry's keyboard – retrieve it on Thursday. I'll make sure your path is clear."

She nodded, some solemnity surfacing on her face, and he knew the extent to which she was worried, if she allowed that to happen. No time for sentiments now, he reminded her with his own gaze, and she gave one more nod of confirmation, and left, the dainty taps of her heels slowly dying away.

He leaned back in his chair, abandoning the paperwork for a moment, as he found something better to occupy his mind with, for now. Anthea was a very intelligent person – and hid it well. Her beauty already prompted people to focus on her exterior and forget her mind, and she made sure she would be taken for granted and bypassed as harmless and stupid – or at least not all there in the head. She was extremely perceptive and masked it with sleepy inattentiveness, which only allowed her to observe even more, as people hid less from her, deeming her too dumb to be a threat.

And she played dumb very excellently, dumb and a little strange, so that people didn't even question that dumbness because they considered her generally 'odd'. Most people with whom he worked wondered why the devil was he keeping such an empty-headed assistant around – shagging her, was the answer of some, who the hell cares, was the answer of others. And both were tremendously idiotic.

He liked her. She was loyal and ready for risks not mentioned in her (extremely well drawn up) job description. And he was fond of her, he admitted – perhaps he was getting old, or this situation was getting to him, it didn't matter, he was fond of her, in his own way, he supposed. She was intelligent, perceptive and skilled. Apart from running his life and running some espionage for him, she was also his bodyguard – the last thing most people would probably suspect her of being, and he was all the more amused by that.

Most of all, she understood him. She knew what he considered a good idea and what an exercise in stupidity, she understood his thinking and genuinely had the same opinion almost all the time. And when she didn't, it was always for legitimate reasons. She understood his sarcastic remarks woven in between the lines, and she definitely better knew how to organise his day than he ever would.

He took her out for dinner sometimes, after work, just because he liked to, and because he could sit with her in peace in a high class restaurant and browse documents while eating, and she would solve problems and situations on her phone while eating. They would hardly speak during those meals, simply stay in each other's company, so accustomed to one another that it was the most familiar setting for them both to go about their business.

And this was actually Mycroft's idea of companionship – simple presence and calm certainty of understanding. Presence, companionship – they really were semantics with the right person, and that was what Anthea was to him non-business-wise.

They made quite the pair, he though half-sardonically. He, with his scowls, cold sarcasm and inherent umbrella, and she, with her sleepy eyes, vague smile on plump red lips, and that annoying phone of hers. She kept up her fuzzy-headed act around him, and he played along, both of them holding back smiles – it was something like an asexual flirt, a banter, a big ongoing inside joke. They had their terms and words and phrases, catchwords just between the two of them, designed both for security measures and because they found them pleasant. She usually called him 'sir', even though when pronounced by her it had the same dimension of informality as if she were speaking his name. When she wanted to be a little more playful or cheer him up, she called him 'boss', because of how ridiculously it sounded to both of them.

Sometimes, she came with him to the house and they continued work there, or simply spent the evening together, in the same fashion as their excursions to restaurants. Sometimes, she spent the night as well, when they would have an exceptional amount of work, or it would be winter and she wasn't keen to go outside, even if only to get into a cab.

He reached out for a glass and poured himself a double measure of his favourite alcohol, and allowed a small smile to glimpse across his lips. They got drunk together once, on one of those nights when she stayed over. They were sitting on the rug in his study (he hadn't even noticed when he slid off the sofa), sharing a bottle of whisky. He was healing another heartache caused by another crack and failure in his fragile relationship with Sherlock, and she was healing her own pain – a family disappointment, he understood, but didn't pry, because he didn't want her to pry either. They didn't need to – their presence and companionship with each other sufficed. The slump into insobriety was slow and smooth, actually gentle and lazy. He remembered her eyes, more hazed than ever, her lips glossed with the liquor, and her hair slightly out of its usual perfect arrangement.

She kissed him then. And because he was curious, and because it felt inexplicably right, he kissed her back. It was the softest sensation he'd felt in too long to care to remember precisely. The kiss had nothing sexual in it – he wasn't interested in women, and she wasn't interested in him. But perhaps a kiss, throughout the centuries of oppression of human physicality, has been translated into solely a sexually-related act, while maybe, somewhere beyond that, it used to have another meaning. An idea of closeness and comfort expressed in the most intimate senses of touch and taste. Because for certain that kiss he shared with Anthea those few years ago, was a gesture of consoling affection, and during it he again felt the assuring idea of presence and companionship. Reliability.

Yes, reliability… He grew sombre again and noticed there was almost no liquid left in his glass. Reliability… He relied on her, even now, when he had nothing to demand of her anymore, except for helping him to get things through to the end.

With as little mess as possible.

* * *

It was an interesting discovery, and Sherlock made it in the evening, curled up on the sofa, with Irene lounging against his side. They were half-watching one of Sherlock's favourite examples of 'crap telly' as John called the frankly outrageously incompetent programmes, while waiting for the new episode of _Doctor Who_. He had to admit that particular science fiction production had some appeal, at least enough to have him sit through forty minutes of an episode's course.

The discovery was that of his interest in Irene's remarks and anecdotes that she dropped a little more than sparingly, offhandedly, and in regards to her doings when abroad and away from him. Usually, such revelations on people's private matters bored him (when made on social grounds, when concerning a case he treated them with attention and interest as possible clues), chiefly because they were mundane, predictable and mentally stale.

Not hers, however. He supposed it could majorly be owed to the fact she was by no means mundane or ordinary – over the time he's known her, she became in his mind the visualisation of the concept reverse to 'dull'. Coupled with his state of love for her it resulted in his interest in her remarks, even when they concerned relatively daily subjects. Though the way she spoke and the topics she selected varied distinctly from those moved by the ordinary people – she noticed what was important and she talked about what was interesting and/or relative. Pondering on that fact, he concluded it was one of those details of her personality that, had it been different, she wouldn't have mattered to him as intensely and completely as she did.

_The_ Woman…, he thought with a vague smirk and a dim glow of worshipful realisation haloing distantly yet prevalently in his mind. He almost reverently twisted a strand of her hair around his finger, until it formed a dark brown band. Despite the blatant symbolism of commitment reflected in his action he allowed his finger to remain wreathed in her hair, before retracting his hand to ghost over the outline of her collarbone revealed by his robe that she took to wearing in the evenings. Usually with nothing underneath, as tonight.

She hummed and nimbly shifted her position, resting a larger expanse of her body against his side, and he vaguely wished for less clothing to cover his person, so he could faster and more thoroughly absorb the body heat radiating from her form. Very quickly into their emotional and physical affiliation he grew to strangely enjoy the teasing (and occasionally provocative) way in which she invaded his personal space. While he usually didn't initiate more intimate physical contact (except when feeling very demanding) she always sensed when he wanted it, and either accommodated or teased him by providing just enough to heighten his desire and then withdrawing to provoke him. Which she usually succeeded in doing.

Yesterday night there was hardly any need for it. They were both considerably starved of each other, and midway their second round of highly passionate intercourse he barely coherently ascertained that the intensity of their demand for one another increased with each subsequent separation, regardless of its length in time.

Another significant finding was his lack of boredom in Irene's presence, and all the more his lack of need for cases in the initial days of their reunions. He naturally sought them sooner or later and always enjoyed Irene's companionship when solving them (their coupled intellect brought outstanding results), but in the first days after her arrival he felt remarkably sated and fulfilled, not requiring any additional stimulants.

This day had been one of such – they'd spent the morning in bed, till early noon alternating between sex and conversations and occasional brief siestas of shallow but restful doze. Afterwards they finished what was leftover from the gourmet takeout Irene had promised and provided the previous night (along with the other, even more luxurious kind of dinner), and took a lengthy shower together. They played three rounds of their co-created Cluedo master version (two to one for her, which ranked a total of thirty seven to thirty four in his favour), and returned to bed. Irene gave him some information about a new piece of intelligent technology being developed and into which she recently looked, and they briefly discussed its minimal potential for danger. Then they stayed in silence, laying together, and he ignored three texts and two calls from Lestrade.

And currently, they sat on the sofa, in front of the television, like the most horrifyingly ordinary people – only there was nothing ordinary in either of them.

He heard the door open, and he turned to meet the by no means anonymous intruder with unappreciative glare, while Irene persistently stared into the screen, mockingly surveying the life insurance advertisement that currently flashed across it.

Mycroft strolled into the living room, umbrella in hand and a dishonestly friendly smile on his face as he regarded his brother and The Woman on the sofa. However as he approached, Sherlock detected a lack of the usual mocking scorn in his eyes, and in parallel noted a slight shift in Mycroft's gait and demeanour, an addition of certain tension and heaviness. But it was not the taut suspense above rage and depression that he displayed on board of the jumbo jet – it was something different, but even more intense despite seeming to stall him. It was solemnity and something else that Sherlock couldn't decipher, something that he couldn't read from his brother's face and movements.

Something he's never seen on him before.

"Hello, Sherlock," Mycroft pronounced precisely, and his voice was devoid of the usual note of irritation and mockery. "Miss Adler. I need to have a word with you two."

Now Irene was attentively scanning Mycroft as well, having caught on the subtle change in his behaviour, and he could see the entire span of her attention focused solely on his brother, with complete exclusion of any external world.

To probe in search for the extent of Mycroft's change, he threw a challenging response in a dull tone.

"Can it wait? We're about to watch _Doctor Who_."

The muscles in Mycroft's jaw twitched slightly as he eyed him coldly, but not without the new shadow to his usually clear gaze, and Sherlock realised the alteration in Mycroft ran unnaturally deep. Now his whole attention was centred on his brother as well. To (admittedly reluctantly, but his personal preferences were irrelevant at the moment) signal that, he turned off the television and watched Mycroft sit in the chair opposite to the sofa.

There was a heaviness in his older brother's movements, and the fashion in which he sat was careful past necessity. There was pensive purposefulness in each movement and expression he made and displayed. Conclusion – whatever (five ideas, so far) he came here with, was important both personally and professionally, to have affected such a spectrum of his manner.

To Sherlock's mild surprise, Mycroft very slowly reached to his jacket pocket and produced a packet of cigarettes, in the same heavy pace taking one out and lighting it. The metallic clicking of his expensive lighter was the only sound in the room, gleaming in the increasingly thickening apprehension that filled the atmosphere, and soon the tempting smell of Dunhill swirled in the air.

But for once, Sherlock felt no responsive craving at all.

As Mycroft took another slow drag Sherlock comprehended the full extent to which his brother was stalling, playing for time with himself, and an instinctive hum of unsettlement entered his brainwork. It was not like Mycroft to _cower_. For all the annoyances and malicious games, Mycroft was not one thing – he was _not_ a coward. Never. Not even in childhood, or perhaps especially not then, when Sherlock took a strange sort of transferred pride in the fact that his older brother never ran from anything. He was very, very young then, of course.

Despite having not shared any past with them prior to the jumbo jet machinations, Irene seemed to have obtained as deep a knowledge on Mycroft as he had accumulated across years – she was, after all, more adept at reading people than he was, his ultimate specialty lay elsewhere. Now she too watched Mycroft attentively and with a sense of apprehension and foreboding. Sherlock gave a miniscule frown at noting the latter expression in Irene's features – given her superior aptitude in reading people, should he be alarmed that she labelled something in Mycroft's demeanour as worrisome?

Mycroft looked up from a spot on his left shoe that he seemed to have been analysing (and for a moment Sherlock wondered if his brother's calming mechanism was the same as his – analyse something irrelevant simply to turn toward the pacifying reliabilities of science and logic), and turned to Irene.

"Has anyone followed you?" he asked, his voice strong as ever despite the weakened look that he must have involuntarily admitted to his face.

"Only your people," Irene replied with just the vaguest tug of a smile – she clearly was in no mood for more, too engrossed in the present current of tension.

Mycroft nodded slowly and flicked off the ash onto the table, remarkably not even remotely interested in finding any safe surface to do so, his eyes probingly trained on Irene as her answer seemed to pique his interest instead of sating it.

"The same as usually?" he asked, and the question surprised both Sherlock and Irene.

"Yes," she answered after a longer moment she took to evaluate causes of Mycroft's reasoning, and consider the enquiry.

"And were you followed lately?" Mycroft turned to Sherlock.

"Not by anyone relevant…" he replied in a slow drawl while his brain whirred in a spur of analysis, seeking out possible reasons for his brother's strange behaviour. Insufficient data.

"Relevance…" Mycroft murmured almost bitterly before crushing out the cigarette halfway through its length, after one last drag. "It appears relevance is a relevant concept, so to speak, Sherlock."

He fell silent again for a moment, and they watched him. At last, Mycroft cleared his throat and straightened himself, his face losing the weakness as he composed himself back into his usual demeanour, but nevertheless the strain of the act glimpsed through the cool composure.

"I appear to have a problem on my hands, and it seems it's… _overgrown_ me a bit," Mycroft narrated in focus, running his fingers over the curve of his umbrella handle. "Which is why I need you both to help me. But before we _delve_ into details, I warn you that once you've agreed to it, there will be no return, and I've ensured the one escape route you can take, but it is slightly extreme."

He reached into his other pocket and produced two British passports, and laid them on the table before them.

"They're real, not forgeries… only they were made illegally," he explained in a factual tone. "If you agree to help me, you might come to a point where your only alternative will be to leave the country rather permanently, and this is the least I could do for you in that configuration of things. So – are you willing to listen to the problem?"

To overcome the surprise, Sherlock focused on the analysis and reached for the passports, promptly selecting the one with his photograph, while passing the other to Irene. Perfect work, mint condition, a real passport, as Mycroft said. Siger Sherrinford – even in this situation he couldn't hold back a wince, though the moment of frustrated dejection at his brother's choice of name was over as rapidly as it came. Beside him Irene was browsing through her own passport, and over her shoulder he noticed Mycroft had gotten them married.

He frowned, marshalling his thoughts into order and extinguishing as much of the unease as he could. The priority at the moment was to complete all the data and then make a judgment on the situation, not make it now, with insufficient facts compensated with grudging emotions.

"Go on," he said simply and colourlessly, while beside him Irene fixed Mycroft with a focused gaze, signalling her undivided attention.

Mycroft gave a slow nod, after which he silently produced his phone. He opened the casing and took out the battery and the card, and from the table he picked up the heavy nutcracker and delivered a heavy smash to the battery, causing cracks and dents in the flat rectangle.

The atmosphere thickened with apprehension as Sherlock felt the involuntary anxiety that he knew Irene shared – Mycroft was not paranoid, he was the clearest and steadiest mind Sherlock had known, and he never surrendered to either pessimism or optimism. Taking such precautions against unwanted surveillance now had to mean the matter he wished to discus was as dangerous as he had mentioned, because otherwise he would never have behaved as he did.

Mycroft leaned forward, his eyes clear and keen, more alerted than Sherlock had ever seen them, as if displaying a sense of hyper-awareness, and Sherlock resorted to coldness in order to steadily push away any influence his brother's unease was beginning to have on him. It seemed to be the coping mechanism in their relationship – that one of them had to keep a clear head while provoking the other to any unsteadiness, be it Sherlock's sulk or Mycroft's exasperation.

"There is a problem in the Service," Mycroft's voice was as steady as always, but quieter than usually, while his eyes relentlessly stayed on their faces. "It has been going on for some time now, and only recently it seems to have… _escalated_. There is a mole… Right among my closest co-workers. I don't know for sure which one of them it is… and if I did, I would never have any proofs to support my thesis before whomever I could turn to. If I had anyone to turn to. That is where the genius of this problem is located."

He paused, while Sherlock sorted the facts in his brain, using them to complement his already gathered knowledge. The aspect of his brother's emotional state he decided to file separately, until the reason to merge the two categories would arrive.

"Intelligence trading is a regular practice and is based on calculations of a lesser evil," Mycroft continued. "Some information is relinquished in order for another one to be obtained… A battle is lost in order to with a war… Ten lives are sacrificed in order to save a hundred," he gave a mild shrug, raising his eyebrows in an almost careless fashion. "On a smaller scale, some information is released to obtain the even more needed data. It's the conversion of values and making sure we, in our own estimation, always finish holding the greater value. Very simple and entirely subjective – _relevant_. But when the information we consider valuable is traded without our knowledge, as well as without knowledge of the benefits we have in exchange… well, things get ever so ugly," he winced with displeasure in his usual fashion. "That's the problem – there is an entire spiral of perfectly organised information management, of well handled intelligence and planned operations, and in documents everything adds up, only there is a _black hole_ in the centre of it all. And nobody sees it, because black hole sucks in light and sound as well, doesn't it? Everything seems to be fine, but when it comes to conducting an operation, something suddenly goes wrong – just a small detail, but when you analyse it, it becomes a paradox, because how could this detail have gone wrong, if it was based on information no one was supposed to possess?"

He hovered, looking at them both and allowing them to process what he had just explained.

"There is a mole," he repeated quietly. "Whoever it is, they're exporting our intelligence, but not to just one source, and they do it invisibly."

"You said you have no one to turn to," Sherlock spoke into Mycroft's brief pause. "Does it mean then that you suspect your bosses as well?"

His brother eyed him with a strange look, another one that Sherlock had never seen him display.

"I'm not sure…" he finally said quietly.

Another moment of silence stretched in the room, each of the three minds consumed in its own thoughts and processes of brainwork.

Irene briefly surveyed the two Holmes brothers seated opposite each other. Sherlock seemed to have turned to the extreme focus in order to sever himself from any emotions that might influence his perception of the moment. On his part, Mycroft was a man of control – his entire life revolved around controlling events, people and facts, and he was the best man possible to be put in such a profession. But right now, it seemed as if there was nothing around him he could control anymore, and the only thing left for him to control was himself. And he did it with dignity, but also without protests against the sense of inevitable foreboding that hovered very visibly in the back of his mind.

She quickly ran over everything he'd told them so far, and compared it with all conversations they've had in recent months. The first conclusion was obvious – that it was this exact mole problem that he needed Janda's information for. And from the fact that when they last spoke he told her he doesn't want Sherlock nosing around the matter, it was an easy deduction that whatever he planned use Janda for, he failed.

The second conclusion was that the problem was a long-spanning one – Mycroft had mentioned that Janda took part in an almost failed drugs operation back in 2005, when a piece of information was unexpectedly leaked to the Americans.

"Sherlock," Mycroft spoke in a steady voice. "I am going to be killed soon. And in case I fail to prevent this outcome, I want the two of you to investigate the matter _most thoroughly of all_."

They admittedly stared at him for a moment – to justify it, Irene thought it was not often that Mycroft Holmes announced his likely imminent death. So this was the foreboding inevitability to which Mycroft didn't protest… _"Ten lives are sacrificed in order to save a hundred."_ – he certainly lived by his rules.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, and she could see his composure locked stronger than ever.

"By whom?" he asked in a quiet drawl soaked with attentiveness.

Mycroft gave a calm, almost benign smile reinforced by the absolute coldness of his eyes.

"By my own co-workers..." he replied slowly. "It appears I was supposed to unknowingly play a role in the mole's plan, but I realised that the mole exists, which means I must die. It helped narrow my circle of suspects considerably though. I will leave you more detailed information on that particular subject, in case they manage to get rid of me. To which everything points, to be honest."

Irene watched him. There was no panic nor desperation in his behaviour nor in his thoughts – she could see them plainly and openly. Despite what he might think, the Ice Man was just a man, a human being, and while he was in many aspects unlike any other, he had thoughts. And if he had them, it meant she would sooner or later be able to read them. It was the principle of her work – if someone had thoughts, she could break them. Which meant that the more intelligent someone was, the less well they were defended from her, despite it being an apparent paradox – Sherlock had learned that more than well. But he taught her a few lessons of his own, notably about the relationship between her head and heart.

Right now, Mycroft was more readable to her than at any point of their acquaintance. There was no panic, no instinctive hysteria and anxiety, but there was a strong and prevalent thrum of a deep reaching emotion – regret. Something she never thought she would see in the eyes of this magnificently composed man. And instantly, through simple elimination, she realised what was both the cause and object of this regret – Sherlock. The only thing in this room, in Mycroft's life, that could evoke this emotion.

Beside her, Sherlock very slowly moved, and for once he hovered soundlessly as he parted those gorgeous lips. His eyes were trained on his brother's, concentrated and relentless, but also ever so slightly hazed in their usual intensity. She supposed it was with the shock.

"Do I…" he cleared his throat to clean it of a mild rasp, his eyes suddenly seeming tired and unclear as he frowned. "Do I need to do something now?"

Mycroft cocked his head a little, looking at his younger brother for a moment as if examining a curiosity, before he shook his head slowly.

"No. Not yet… I'll let you know. Or they will. And soon, Sherlock. Be ready," he glanced at her as well. "Both of you."

He reached for his dismantled phone and put all three pieces of it into his pocket with extreme focus on every action and movement. He stood up from the chair, gathering his umbrella into his hand, and looked at his brother again. He hesitated, lingering, and Irene could see the immense tension between two forces pulling away from each other inside him, causing this taut block. Eventually, in a slightly jerky movement, he took a step forward, towards Sherlock, and reached out with his hand.

Sherlock instinctively leaned his head backwards, pressing it into his shoulders as Mycroft's hand approached it, icy cold surprise and confusion lighting up the younger Holmes' eyes. Mycroft laid a hand on Sherlock's head and closed a handful of his black curls in a hold, his movements slightly ragged and tense, while his eyes, still searing into Sherlock's, suddenly stormed with an amount of conflicting emotions. He gave a few almost imperceptible nods directed at himself, and let go of Sherlock's head, walking out of the room.

The shut of the door, even if not at all loud, was profoundly definitive.

* * *

**Who will guess where from I took the alias Mycroft put in Sherlock's passport?**

**I think that, despite some appearances, Mycroft is actually the more emotional and vulnerable one of the Holmes brothers. I really loved what we got to see of him in _A Scandal in Belgravia_.**

**As I said, this chapter was hard to write... the last scene was almost a nightmare - 'dying' Mycroft Holmes is OOCness itself, and how do you write an OOC Mycroft while trying to simltaneously keep him IC? *faints* I hope it was readable, I almost nosebled over this trying to outsmart myself :P**

**I hope you liked the bit about Anthea - the first of many relationship studies. I really like her character and thought it would be nice to make her the probably only person whom Mycroft relies on, in a sense.**

**So again - writing is a car, reviews are petrol :)**


	2. Towards Zero

**Oh my, I'm so, SO horribly sorry to take so long! School started a while back and real life is a bother when writing fanfics. I so very much hope at least some of you still remember this story :)**

**I desperately hope to be able to update more than once a month, but I can't promise - school is a bitch. I'll try my best though.**

**In addition, this chapter was really hard to write - I mean, really. The next one should be easier...**

**I hope you enjoy, and please review, I cherish every single one of those pieces of pure goodness :D**

* * *

**2. Towards Zero**

It was his own fault, of course. Sherlock, after all, was in some dimensions his fault and his achievement – throughout his baby brother's life he was the most prominent influence on his development and occasionally the decisions he made. Sometimes he worried that perhaps Sherlock's decision to get into drugs was also, in some ways, conditioned by him, by the relations Sherlock had towards him. But on those occasions he reminded himself he shouldn't take so much credit for his remarkably independent brother's life – Sherlock was mostly his own man.

Well, now he was also The Woman's man… Mycroft scowled with a sigh. Irene Adler was a source of twofold bitterness to him when it came to his younger brother. On one level he was angry she tackled Sherlock's defences and bent him into falling in love with her – because that was the essence of the emotions his brother very clearly felt towards The Woman. He was angry she breached Sherlock's immunity to sentiment and injected him with an almost lethal dose of it – though not without being filled with it herself. He wasn't sure whether the mutual character of their relationship was a consolation or just the reverse, but he was inclined towards the latter. Somehow, it was even worse that she loved him as well.

On the other level he was resentful. That if Sherlock did feel some deeper brand of sentiment, it was towards her and not towards him, his brother and voluntary caregiver for a long period of time.

Still, it was his own fault, he reminded himself reasonably. His fault and his achievement… From the moment he realised he was not free of the handicapping influence of sentiment, he had the goal and the idea that Sherlock would be liberated from it. Especially since it was Sherlock himself who was the one and solitary focus of Mycroft's sentiment, the one thing that meant he would never be free from it completely. So since he did care about his little brother, he was determined to give him the gift of freedom and perfection – Sherlock would be the ultimate, improved Holmes, without the dangerous disadvantage of emotional attachments to things as fragile as human lives.

Sherlock understood the disadvantage of caring as well, he comprehended it at a very young age. But when Sherlock was a child, the brothers had been close – far closer than they should be if there was a goal of no sentiment for either of them. Then Sherlock got older. His personality strengthened, the hormonal period of mutiny magnified the rift between their characters as he determined to dissociate himself from his brother. Then the drugs… the horrible late nineties, Mycroft recalled with a shudder and distaste. Three years of welter and mayhem, Sherlock rocking to and fro between sobriety and abandonment. And the more Mycroft tried to help, the more Sherlock pulled away, the more he resisted.

He supposed the happy ending should be owed to his baby brother's innate propensity for reason – he was aware that he couldn't continue a fulfilling existence that way, and it inclined him to go through a detox.

For a while it went well – Sherlock was certainly free of sentimental attachments of any sort, cool, balanced and not emotionless as people often regarded him to be. Oh, no, he had emotions, they both did – joy, anger, irritation, humour, enjoyment… _sulk_… They just didn't get emotionally attached.

But then Sherlock met Lestrade. And then Sherlock met Mrs Hudson. Then Sherlock met John.

And then Sherlock met Irene Adler…

His fourth and most complete emotional attachment. His little brother's connection with that woman spanned the greatest number of levels, greater than any other affiliation Sherlock had made in his life, emotionally speaking. He was attached to her in various dimensions, and their number was overwhelmingly high, as was the strength of that attachment.

So it was his own fault that he wasn't the fifth (or the first, to speak chronologically) of Sherlock's attachments. It was he, after all, who taught his brother the perils of such investments, and bared to him the futility of emotional connections. And Sherlock comprehended it. Furthermore, he still upheld the belief, though in an edition modified cleverly enough to accommodate his four exemptions from the rule.

Maybe it was actually better that way. Because when it came down to it, he couldn't find a way to express his sentiment for Sherlock, and had no idea what he wished to receive in return. Like he did two weeks ago, when impulsively reaching for Sherlock's head, and too late realising he didn't know what that impulse was supposed to end with. So the only thing he was capable of, was to somewhat awkwardly and desperately hold his brother's hair, wishing he knew how to stroke his head.

Pathetic.

In all definitions of the concept. Pathetic of him to have succumbed to such outward gestures of weakest sentiment, and pathetic of him not to know how to act upon them.

He only hoped today would go better, one way or another. There's a last time for everything, after all, is there not?

* * *

Despite appearances of normality (that is, 'normality' in the special Holmesian-Adlerian definition), there seemed to be a vague sort of tension in the living room of 221 B. Or maybe not tension, no… something lighter and calmer, John thought – pensiveness? Yes, that would be the word… Not that it was very apparent. To the contrary, everything seemed in the usual 'order' here, a simple morning between the world's two least likely lovers.

Irene was sitting at the table, painting her nails, occasionally glancing at the newspaper, while Sherlock was sipping his coffee from a mug adorned with happy bees and a fond "I love you, honey" declaration. It was a Christmas gift from Irene, and as with all other things she had given him, Sherlock displayed a puzzling attachment to and contentment with the teasing present. Needless to say, this was his favourite mug.

"Sooo… nothing new at all?" John asked, looking between the two geniuses very much absorbed in activities they would usually call dull. Well, Sherlock would.

"That would depend on your definition of newness," Sherlock opened his laptop. "In terms of my usual routine, a case offered by Lestrade is nothing new… they seem to have managed to find their way to a dead end in a triple homicide, so they're calling me to take a look at the place where the bodies were found. Tomorrow morning."

John pursed his lips and frowned, looking sideways in mocking focus.

"Is 'me' a new shorthand for 'me and my girlfriend'?" he asked. He was in the mood to put Sherlock on the edge and see how far he could prod him. Maybe then they would tell him what was going on here…

Sherlock looked up from the laptop screen, the coffee mug frozen in his hand, and his clear eyes were full of an expression that would make anyone choose their next words very carefully. But John liked to think that for Sherlock he wasn't anyone.

"Girlfriend?" the detective spat the word hatefully, pulling a face, while Irene continued to paint her nails completely unfazed, if one didn't count a small smirk of delight on her lips.

"That would be the Oxford definition..." John gave a small smile.

Sherlock took a breath with clear intentions of saying something that was supposed to make John regret coming over in the first place, but the merciful fate intervened. That is, as merciful as the arrival of Mycroft Holmes could be considered.

However, already the second after the elder Holmes stepped into the room, John felt a strange and enormous change – Sherlock's expression was so much different to his usual greeting scowl he reserved for (and exchanged with) Mycroft. This time, he had intense keenness and pensiveness on his face, his eyes sweeping over his brother in an almost frantic analysis, while Irene turned in her chair so she could face Mycroft completely, her attitude just as alarmed, but somehow more thoughtful and deeply focused than Sherlock's. Clearly there was some new case, a strange one, in which Mycroft was involved…

As to Mycroft himself, Jon almost did a double take when he looked at him. There was an indescribable sort of definitive heaviness in him, even if he looked the same as always. It was a feeling John got, even if Mycroft's appearance was like usual – it was something in his face, in his eyes, and maybe a little in the way he held himself. Without the usual quiet, sly strength and confidence.

And it was almost terrifying.

"You look alive," Sherlock stated slowly and with a strangely immense amount of tension in his voice.

Mycroft scowled depreciatively, tilting his head to side, while Irene reacted strangely, John thought – she sent Sherlock a narrow-eyed, intense look, as if she was reminding him of something.

"Feast your eyes while you have the chance," Mycroft's voice was dryer than usually, and for some reason, combined with this strange tension, they made John's blood chill a little.

Mycroft's eyes wandered over to him, and for a moment he seemed to be hesitating, before becoming resigned, as if nothing was able to bother him anymore.

"I come bearing gifts," he announced, taking on his usual spry sarcasm, turning to look at Sherlock again. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and handed them to Sherlock. "You might find them useful soon. Both of you," he added, strangely meaningfully, looking at Irene. "I asked you not to do anything, Sherlock…" his voice was unexpectedly much more weary when he turned to his brother again.

"You said I don't _need to_ do anything now," Sherlock was suddenly angry, his eyes almost glowing with hot irritation, piercing challengingly and… _reproachfully_ into Mycroft's. "You never told me I _can't_."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Sherlock!" Mycroft's voice was an angry exclamation, raw in his throat and taut with emotions, and John was almost startled by the onslaught of intense feelings flicking between the brothers and Irene who uncharacteristically stayed silent.

"Be quiet," she drawled thickly, causing John to retract his last mental statement. "_Now_."

John gaped at the shockingly commanding power her voice abruptly had on Sherlock and Mycroft. She was looking at them with burning eyes, even more than Sherlock's, and she seemed just as involved as the brothers. This was the last straw for John.

"Alright… what does it all mean?" he looked demandingly at the trio. Not that any of them had a history of respecting his demands…

Sherlock looked at Mycroft, then Irene, and at last at John. He seemed to be thinking about something (well, as usual…), before he looked John directly in the eyes.

"It means I might soon become an only child…"

John could feel his eyebrows shoot up right to the hairline. For a moment he sat, trying to wrap his mind around what Sherlock just said and trying to make sense of it, because the conclusion he got was too improbable and bizarre to possibly be right.

"Yes, John," Mycroft said with a mild sigh. "It means I am most likely going to die rather soon."

"Oh, my God…" John whispered, his lips barely managing to move. "What is… Is there… are you ill?" he asked, fighting with his throat for every word against the shock.

"No. I'm going to be killed," Mycroft informed him with discoloured calm.

John closed his eyes, suddenly having to focus against the swaying balance. He could hear a loud roaring in his ears, and he knew it was his blood, rushing fast from the shock, and he tried to treat himself for it, like in Afghanistan. He concentrated on taking in a deep breath, on holding it for two seconds, feeling it in his lungs, and then on releasing it.

He opened his eyes, slowly, and looked at Sherlock, then Mycroft, then Irene, taking in the taut seriousness on their faces, and tried to… to think logically, to rationalise, to… to do what Sherlock did.

"What's going on?" he asked slowly and clearly.

"A mole among my co-workers," Mycroft was succinct, to say the least. Then again, John wouldn't want to elaborate either, if he were in his position. "The situation outgrew me and now I'm… _on the losing side_," he looked meaningfully at Sherlock and Irene. "Right in the middle of it all… so logically, I have to be pulled in and destroyed."

John sucked in another breath and released it, puffing out his cheeks.

"And… and what, what, nothing can be done?" he asked.

"I wouldn't waste all our time with this conversation if that were the case," Mycroft responded dryly. "Still, I do what I can… and in the spirit of that, miss Adler, could I have a word?"

For a moment Irene looked like she was thinking about what he asked her, until she nodded and got up from the chair, and the two left the room.

Slowly, silently, John turned his head to look at his best friend who sat wordlessly, eyes lingering on the door through which Mycroft and Irene disappeared. He felt shocked and baffled and his head was too small to contain the sense of what he just heard – it was too absurd, too unthinkable… no…

"Sherlock… what's going on?"

Irene followed Mycroft until they were in the hall, out of hearing range, where he stopped, taking a moment before facing her. She allowed him her patience, watching him carefully – his sudden visit alarmed her. There was nothing in Mycroft Holmes' life that was done without a reason or on the whim of an impulse, so his coming here had to be an element of a plan or other chain of carefully designed actions. And given the latest developments, as well as the – mostly fruitless – investigative attempts she and Sherlock made, every glimpse into Mycroft's actions and reasons could be immensely informative.

"Seeing as I don't have much time, I'll be brief, so pardon a possible lack of finesse in my address," Mycroft informed her dryly. "We share the same sentimental priority, I understand… or at the very least I now desperately hope that we do. We both know that despite appearances my brother is not as self-sufficient and independent as he makes people believe, and as he perhaps would like to make himself believe. Intellectually and physically he of course could be absolutely independent and detached, but emotionally…" Mycroft hesitated and they offered a grimacing smirk. "Well, we both know he wrote a sad song for you, don't we? And visited his own grave just to watch John do the same thing. I wasn't happy about my brother's choice of… _romantic interest_…" he briefly swept his gaze up and down her form. "It's romantic to begin with, and it's you to end with. Not necessarily what I consider the healthiest thing for my brother."

Irene nodded slowly, watching Mycroft shrewdly, taking in his face.

"Are you afraid that I am capable of breaking your brother's heart… or that I will actually do it?" she asked softly and calmly.

The corners of Mycroft's lips tugged up into a smile as a small spark lit up in his eyes. He nodded, looking at her with contemplative appreciation.

"Excellent, miss Adler. That's why I wish my lot were half as good as you… I think we both know what I'm afraid of is the possibility. For once I feel secured by the mutuality of your sentiment," the last word clearly was still distasteful to him and, she had to admit, to her a little as well.

"But not enough, which is why I'm the only one you actually ask not to abandon your brother… Mrs Hudson, John, Lestrade you trust enough…"

"To the contrary, miss Adler, in some ways I trust them less than you."

"Trusting my intelligence doesn't count," she half-smirked. "This is just equivalent to being even more careful around me. Anyway – rest assured, I don't have any intentions to break your baby brother's heart. But that's not what you wanted to talk about."

"No," agreed Mycroft. "It isn't. I know you have a very strong self-preservation instinct, something my brother _clearly_ lacks," he scowled. "So I wanted to ask you to make him leave with you if things go badly if I die. I want you to be the one to decide when to stop, if it comes to it. Because we both know Sherlock won't."

Irene nodded slowly. She fully understood Mycroft's request and the reasons for it – Sherlock's tenacity often obliterated his perception of his own safety and endurance.

"Don't you worry," she said coolly. "I will."

"I'd appreciate that. At last, one upside of the fact that he would follow you anywhere."

"You wanted to tell him something too, Mycroft," she reminded him, because he seemed to have forgotten. She deliberately used his first name, testing his reaction, but it amounted to him simply looking for a few seconds – apparently he noticed the extent of her seriousness. After all, she called him 'Mr Holmes' out of teasing mercilessness, and by removing it now, she allowed him to see she treated his situation with complete competence of sound judgment.

They returned to the room where Sherlock was cleaning his violin bow with a higher than usually level of meticulousness, and John was applying a circular massage to his temples. Apparently, Sherlock had just detailed the situation to him. And it seemed he was indelicate. Well. He was never good at the delicate messages, was he?

He looked up when they came in, and he glanced at her briefly as she sat back in her chair, his attention turning to Mycroft. She could see his eyes centre on him and expand their perceptiveness, like an adjusting lens of a camera – she always thought it was damn sexy.

"Don't lose the keys, Sherlock," Mycroft instructed wryly. "And… please take it into consideration that I don't want you nosing around. Not _yet_…"

Sherlock gave no sign of agreement or defiance, therefore Mycroft issued a small sigh before letting his eyes wander casually about the room. Irene frowned slightly, observing him – he seemed to be looking for something, but not any particularly defined item. So something that would serve a purpose he had in his mind…

She watched him take a step towards the table and brush his fingertips over a thin notebook of sheet music – Sherlock's latest work, only just recently finished clean re-write. The draft was a stack of loose pages, full of crossed out passages and notes crookedly written in a hurry of silent but extremely intense inspiration. It was a very particular work, and while Irene normally would relish another opportunity to torment Mycroft Holmes – he was so deliciously _funny_ – present situation could hardly pass for normal.

Mycroft lifted the script and arched his eyebrows at the title written in Sherlock's hand at the top – _The Woman_. He then folded the pages in half, raised them in an informational gesture at Sherlock and tucked them into the inside pocket of his suit. Sherlock didn't bat an eyelash, but the shrewdness in his eyes increased, and she could see a rapid upsurge of analysis and attempts at deductive track of reasoning to conclude why Mycroft would take the sonata.

"He's musically deaf," Sherlock drawled, looking at her sharply almost as soon as the door behind Mycroft closed. "I have five ideas why he'd take your sonata, but each has at least one majorly handicapping flaw. Did anything he told you clarifies that?"

She slowly shook her head as she ran the entire course of their conversation through her head again, streaming the words and examining them under this angle.

Nearby, John sighed, puffing out his cheeks.

"So… so what, no one's going to do anything?"

Sherlock looked at him, and the faintest spark flicked in his eyes.

"What do you think?"

* * *

Mycroft visited yet again, two days later, once again coming in the morning, and once again coinciding with John's own visit. To John he appeared even further disturbed than the last time – on the outside he looked the same as ever, except for several signs of not having slept at all for the last twenty-four hours at least. On the inside he seemed rather shaken – as shaken as Mycroft could be… and John had a very stomach-gripping feeling that against appearances Mycroft could be shaken very deeply after all.

"I'm definitely stopping to enjoy your sense of humour," Mycroft said in a tone that attempted to be cold, looking between Sherlock and Irene. "You promised not to nose around, so she does – a very _cheap_ formality trick," he scowled depreciatively.

"Well, since you don't consider _me_ competent enough to work otherwise than under your strict instructions…" the tension in Sherlock's voice was unexpected and uncharacteristic – it was different than his usual miff when arguing with Mycroft, it was so, so much more… John thought it probably came from extreme concern. "I know very well you think she's cleverer than me," luckily, there was no resentment in that surprising admission, because John had a feeling that would make things a whole load worse.

Mycroft pressed his lips into a thin line, angrily eyeing his younger brother.

"In some matters certainly. And I get this impression more and more often, Sherlock," he said sternly in a raised voice. He then closed his eyes for a brief moment and breathed. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer and touched with the usual coolness. "I brought you something else."

Even though very surprised, John assumed he couldn't be even half as stunned as Sherlock, if the expression on the brilliant detective's face was any indication to go by. What Mycroft produced from his slim briefcase was an old, hardcover copy of_ Towards Zero_ by Agatha Christie, a bit mangled and frayed around the edges and thirty years old at least at first glance.

John looked at Sherlock again, and his surprise increased. His best friend sat still as if carved in stone, ideally motionless in his slightly uncomfortable sulking position which was broken by his head raised off his knees and leaned slightly forward. His eyes were wide and clear, frozen on the book as if on the centre of the world, lips parted in disbelief and eyebrows raised slightly in shock. Mycroft pressed his lips together and placed the book on the table when it became too apparent his brother was too transfixed to reach for it at the moment.

There had to have been some story behind the item to stir up such an reaction in Sherlock, and John was looking forward to learning all about it – or at least as much as Sherlock would allow him. Well, if he withholds, John reckoned he could ask Irene – because Sherlock certainly would tell her everything.

"I think it's time you read it again," Mycroft added, and his words seemed to have broken the trance of surprise that Sherlock was surrounded with.

There was something strange swimming around Sherlock's eyes for a moment, and he opened his mouth to speak, but just before he managed to utter the first word, the silence was interrupted by a text alert emanating from Mycroft's pocket. The older brother retrieved the phone and read the text, his face changing slightly, and for a moment John had the impression that Mycroft had grown pale, but he wasn't sure if it was only a trick of his mind.

With stone cool, Mycroft pocketed the phone and looked at Sherlock and Irene with a small, mirthless smirk.

"Now, since we've taken care of this one more thing, I must bid you all goodbye," he announced. "I'm desperately needed elsewhere. I hope you can do without me."

John watched Sherlock swallow, and very intensely tried not read Mycroft's words as a euphemism or a metaphor in view of the idea of his looming death (which, by the way, still was labelled 'insane' in his private estimation).

Mycroft lingered for a moment, looking at Sherlock. It was a strange, almost instinctive need to map out his brother's features in his mind, heighten the definition with which he could recall them – it was a deceptive defect of human brain that it failed to accurately reconstruct the image of people seen often and across a large span of time.

There was a twinge in his throat again, and he tried to stifle it, embarrassed and annoyed with its weakness, but he found that the longer he gazed at his brother – the pale face, angular features, black hair lit up with the sun falling onto him through the window – the more it grew. He felt an urge once more, the exact same one that led him to grip Sherlock's hair in a failed and frankly pathetic attempt at a fond gesture, and with shaming resignation he found himself too weak and too lost to try one more time.

So he turned around, heading for the door without a goodbye, because he wasn't sure he wanted to speak – he might lose what control he had left and say more than he intended. Even if – he realised – the witnesses of such a breakdown would only be three people, somewhat close to him, whether he liked it or not.

"Come see us again, Mycroft," he heard Irene Adler speak, and her voice was unusually pleasant, almost soft, and very steady. He lingered for a moment in the doorframe and glanced over his shoulder at the trio he was leaving behind.

"One way or another," he answered quietly.

And left.

* * *

As soon as the door behind Mycroft clicked shut, Sherlock leapt off his chair and grabbed at his shoes and coat. When John, slightly confused by the sudden flurry of energy from a previously stone-still Sherlock, looked towards Irene, he found her already dressing as well, though her eyes slipped warily towards the detective, as if reading something she wasn't sure of.

"Sher… Sherlock," John tried for his friend's attention – or even bloody acknowledgement of existence! It wouldn't be the first time Sherlock would leave, locking him in the flat, but it certainly would be the first time he'd do so when John even _no longer lived here_. "Where are you two going?"

"Follow him," Sherlock's jaw was set in a slightly uncharacteristic way that belayed sheer determination and a touch of anger.

"Um… are you sure it's a good idea?" John caught himself questioning the decision even though he himself was pulling on his jacket, ready to follow the two blue-eyed geniuses.

"Indirect observation failed to bring satisfying results – logical strategy is to assume direct observation," Sherlock clipped.

"Right, and he's not gonna notice we're following him," John allowed himself to be sceptical.

Sherlock only shrugged.

"I don't care if he does. I want to know what's going on – he asks for posthumous help, but refuses to share more information than what he considers right at the moment. But since he asked for _my_ help, I believe I can decide what information I need."

John nodded and followed the couple in silence. It was an almost movie-like cliché that they caught a cab and had the spooked driver follow Mycroft's car – Sherlock's menacingly gleaming eyes and detached-from-reality facial expression sure didn't help allay what fears and doubts the poor man might have had, and when he checked out Irene in the rear view mirror she only smirked and pointed at the road ahead of them.

John shifted, somewhat uncomfortable with being squeezed in the middle between Sherlock and Irene, and glanced at the detective who stared out the window with a piercing look in his eyes, those rotors in his brain visibly whirring like crazy. John cleared his throat, turning to his best friend slightly nervously.

"Has it… occurred to you…"

"Yes," was a customary and dismissive interruption, and John bit back a frustrated sigh. Living with Sherlock he made a dazzling discovery about himself – namely, he had a saintly patience and capability of serenity.

"No. Has it occurred to you that he might be trying to protect you?" he asked.

No reaction.

"That he's holding back, because in case he manages to take care of this himself, he doesn't want you tangled in all that mess?" he prodded on.

Sherlock exhaled a brief, mirthless chuckle, just a singular breath, and turned to glance at John with cold eyes.

"It seems even when I help him, everything must be on his terms. But no, John, I'm not doing it just to _spite him_," he scowled, revealing a remarkable resemblance to his older brother. "I'm doing it because he has not allowed me an independent estimate of the situation, and in the course of such I might be able to notice something he has failed to. It has happened before that one of us found a fact or a loophole that the other had missed, largely because though using the same premise of logic, we prefer different approaches. And in a situation where his life is highly endangered, I consider it foolish not to let me in on absolutely every single detail that concerns this threat."

John nodded, doing his best to absorb Sherlock's way of rationalising. All the points were valid, yes, and the explanation was convincing, but he couldn't help but feel that in it all there still was the element of Sherlock's mutinous defiance of Mycroft. It seemed to be one of the bases in the brothers' relationship, and John supposed that something so very deeply ingrained in that relation would only evolve further, in some strange, concern-based direction in such a tense situation like this. What he couldn't guess was if it would be a problem or an advantage.

As usual with Sherlock, it would probably be both.

He glanced at Irene, but even though she surely registered every single word that was spoken in the cab, she was busily observing Mycroft's car rolling down the street ahead of them, separated from their cab by two other vehicles. John frowned, thinking. She was uncharacteristically quiet on each of Mycroft's visits and whenever the subject of his (unbelievable…) suspected death was approached. She always would become focused and meditative, and John couldn't imagine what she thought of to save his life. But whatever made the infamous Irene Adler silent and pensive, it must have been big.

It surprised all three of them when Mycroft stopped and disembarked at Trafalgar Square. Irene moved forward, leaning across John and bracing her hands on Sherlock's knee as she strained to get as close to the opposite window as possible while the detective glued himself to it in watchful observation. On his part, John pushed himself back into the seat, not entirely comfortable with having Irene pressed so close to him. It was some sort of residual weirdness from the time he first saw her – stark bloody naked. Well, there was that and the idea of personal space that she seemed to get off on purposefully ignoring.

"That's not good…" Irene's voice was thick with focus and quiet, while Sherlock's frown deepened, and John wriggled a little, trying to have a look out the window as well.

He followed Sherlock and Irene's gazes to locate Mycroft in the crawling myriad of people, and he could see him only for a moment before a wall of pedestrians obliterated the vision. He was standing outside his black car and speaking to his driver, cool and composed, and John lost the visual contact as a group of people rolled out onto the crossing. When they passed, Mycroft already was gone.

As if stung by his brother's sudden absence, Sherlock abruptly jumped out of the cab, followed by Irene, the pair leaving John with the awkward task of quick fumbling for money for the angry driver, and he ran after the annoying duo, overpaying the cabby by at least seven pounds. Bumping into people and manoeuvring to avoid collision with mothers with small kids, John jogged, trying to catch up with Sherlock and Irene, but his task was suddenly made more difficult by the fact that the two had split up. Naturally, he followed Sherlock.

The square was riddled with people in constant motion, and Sherlock's eyes flashed attentively in between the silhouettes as he searched for his brother in the thick early noon crowd. Ice cream sellers, annoying tourists with cameras, kids riding the four lions, art students sketching the buildings, people taking a stroll and splashing in the fountains, and a multitude of other people, crawling the space with thick crowd.

He prowled on, sliding and merging among the silhouettes, combing their amount with his gaze, attuned to any hints of familiarity. Mycroft may have despised legwork, but when need called he certainly knew how to disappear and keep away from unwanted eyes, hence Sherlock was abnormally vigilant. Sounds, images, motions – it all flashed in detailed blurs, in his mind reduced to the cerebral equivalent of peripheral vision as he hunted the clusters for his brother.

At last, he spotted the silhouette etched into his memory with extraordinary precision, and he promptly manoeuvred through the crowd towards him. Mycroft was standing still in a spot, one hand leaning on his umbrella, and the only element disrupting his otherwise perfect semblance of tranquillity was the ambiguous emotion in his eyes as he too seemed to search for something.

His eyes landed on his younger brother, and Sherlock found himself suddenly slowing down his pace, hindered by the mixture of outrage and… _fright_ that flashed across Mycroft's eyes within a mere fraction of a second. Once more adopting a calm demeanour, his brother looked down to his slightly raised forearm, eyes glancing over the watch on his wrist, before he raised his head again, shaking it slowly in pretend frustration over the time. His eyes slowly found Sherlock's again, and his head shaking slowed all the more while his look gained intensity, boring into Sherlock's with clear, unrestrained message.

_Don't. No. No._

Sherlock stared, now completely still, feeling a slow frown form in between his eyebrows as he attempted to process the almost desperate quality that the solemnity in his brother's eyes took on as his defiant head gesture slowed to a halt.

Suddenly, Mycroft jerked forward, a projectile ripping from his chest with so high a speed that barely noticeable, a splatter of blood bursting forward from the area of his heart. Mycroft swayed for a short moment, before sliding down to his knees, a pool of deep red blood soaking through his shirt and jacket.

People jerked, some rushing towards and others away from the centre of focus, obliterating Mycroft's figure completely, screams ensued, churning furiously with chaos, while Sherlock felt an abrupt halt in his brain and body, a quick jolt of absolute immobility that froze him into the ground as he watched the crowd shift in two directions. His heart seemed to stop completely for a moment, before it burst into function with a frenetic pace of sheer catatonia, his vision blurring as sudden airy lightness fell sickly over his head.

He lunged forward, but only his upper body seemed to respond to his instincts, as his legs remained still in place for a moment, and he fell, his hands and wrist exploding with sharp ache as he braced himself on the coarse pavement. He leapt up and ran forward, desperately clawing his way through the swarm of screaming people, pushing and elbowing them away, pulling them savagely by their clothes out of his way.

He broke through the tight ring of people surrounding his brother, and fell to his knees beside Mycroft laying on the ground. Blood was spurting in slow rhythm from the open shot wound on the left side of his chest, more of it seeping out his mouth, his breathing jagged and erratic, hitched with his throat clenching over the blood pooling inside it.

Sherlock's mind was chloroformed with thick, bright fog, and the only thought that sickly flashed through it was some vague piece of information about advanced first aid, and he pressed his hands into Mycroft's wound to staunch the blood flow. The liquid was hot and viscous, his hands sliding in it before at last finding the right position, and he realised his own breathing was just as threaded as his brother's.

Mycroft swallowed, a small amount of blood dribbling from his mouth as he uttered a clipped exhale resembling a cough, and his eyes found Sherlock's. There was a sense of urgency in them, and Sherlock held his breath, muting out the noise of people phoning frantically for ambulance around him. Mycroft was attempting to communicate something to him, and he focused all of his attention on him, forcing away the emotional turmoil that raged inside him and devoured his logic.

"Two… thirty-three… A…" Mycroft managed out barely above a whisper, his eyes clear for a moment before he succumbed completely to the high level of shock that his body was pulling him into.

"Oh my God…" John's airy groan sounded woozily beside him, but he deleted it as irrelevant.

There was more motion, and a fluorescent vest and sleeves swam into his centrally-focused vision. His brain was aware of the ambulance staff working on Mycroft, but his body was incapable of cooperation, his fingers clenching on the hem of his brother's jacket, slick with blood and stiff in a reflex. A man's hands pried his grip open, but he didn't listen to the unimportant words accompanying the action.

"No…" he was aware of his own speech only because he felt the vibrations in his throat and mouth, and he vaguely realised he was almost deaf at the moment. "It's my brother…"

"Sherlock…"

"Sir…"

"Hospital."

"My God."

"Sherlock!"

"Must go!"

"Sherlock!"

The sounds rushed back into existence, surging into his brain in an overpowering intensity, along with John gripping his shoulder. No. It wasn't John. It was Irene. Her eyes were sharper than ever, and he realised it was an attempt to reign in her fear. She pulled him up, and he felt every single muscle on his legs trembling as if exerted by enormous strain.

"John, get a cab! At least one street away." Irene ordered quickly, and John nodded, retreating in a hurry, his soldier training providing him with a coping mechanism.

Sherlock attempted to walk, swayed with a clipped moan, and tried again, supported by Irene. There was a raging sensation welling up in his stomach, clenching his throat and corresponding with the nauseous lightness of his head. As he and Irene reached a street corner, the sensation cumulated, and he doubled over, vomiting in a constricting retch, his throat closed for so long that his need of air became desperate, and yet still he couldn't overcome the clenched muscles of his gullet.

When at last he gasped for air, he choked, which triggered another emetic reflex, and he doubled up once again, his diaphragm contracting and locking abruptly in that state. He forced a raw grunt out of his throat to return it to its capacity, and he took in a careful breath of air, his mouth bitter and acid. He slowly wiped his lips with the back of his hand, pending for the release of endorphins due to the rapid relaxation of muscles that always followed retching, and which was responsible for the feeling of peace and improvement that victims of stomach viruses felt after vomiting.

Irene closed her hand around his upper arm, the grip well balanced between strength and gentleness, and she urged him up once again. He looked at her and met with her watchful, examining gaze, and briefly closed his eyes, giving a singular nod to assure her he was fine.

Physically.

* * *

The cab ride home was irrelevant, therefore he allowed it to pass by him, not memorising any instance of it. He kept his eyes unseeingly ahead, hoping the swaying motions wouldn't set off another wave of nausea, and numbly counted the seconds to keep a steady rhythm.

They reached 221 B, and Sherlock continued counting seconds, marshalling his thoughts into silence until he was certain he was within enough capacity to accommodate and manage them all. John was saying something, but since he kept on counting, he didn't comprehend the words, only heard Irene answer.

His hands were coated with partially dry blood, and he flinched, rubbing his fingers together against the thick sensation. He could feel the liquid underneath his fingernails, present and intruding against the sensitive flesh, and he went to the bathroom to wash it off. When he absently stared into the mirror as a stream of hot water poured over his hands, he realised his mouth was also smeared with a grotesque, wide smudge of blood that he'd left there when he wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

The blood wouldn't wash from under his fingernails and he rubbed furiously, brushing the bar of soap over his fingertips. The water in the sink was garish, bright red, and now he could also smell the metallic tang.

When he returned to the living room, he found Irene pensively browsing through something on her phone, and John sitting in a chair with a hesitant look that very clearly implied his intentions to talk.

His phone rang and buzzed in his pocket, and he glanced at the screen – unknown, stationary number. The possibilities were clear, variables limited, outcome – predictable.

"Hello?" he answered quietly and steadily, turning away from John's concerned eyes and Irene's soothingly detached presence.

"This is doctor Marcus Barlow from St Thomas' Hospital," the voice was soft and placid and unbearably sensitive while retaining professionalism. "Am I speaking to Mr Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry to inform you that at 12.36 today we have called the death of your brother, Mycroft Holmes, brought over with a gunshot wound," the voice relayed the predictable message. Sherlock only continued to calmly, reservedly breathe. "I'm very sorry."

"I see," Sherlock replied quietly.

"We'll be in touch regarding the funeral arrangements and the transference of your brother's personal possessions found on his person, sir. I understand there is to be an investigation regarding his death. We also can offer psychological help, if you feel in need of it."

"Thank you," Sherlock said simply, and disconnected.

The phone was heavy in his hand, and for a moment he simply looked at it, as if unsure what to do with it, before he deposited it back into his pocket. The blood under his fingernails still irritated his skin, and he slowly headed back into the bathroom to again try to wash it off.

John watched Sherlock retreat, and held back the urge to speak. Let him… let him have a moment, he reasoned, thinking back to a friend he lost in Afghanistan. Let him deal with it.

He looked at Irene whose eyes also were trained on the now closed bathroom door, and for some reason she frowned when they heard the shower start running. He ran a shaky hand over his hair and exhaled deeply, puffing out his cheeks.

"God…" he groaned, only then realising he said it aloud. "What are we going to do?"

Irene's eyes were steady, but clear and sharp as ever, and he damn well hoped she really was intelligent enough to come up with something now. She was sure good at breaking Sherlock, but was she good at helping fix him?

His gut was wrecked with guilt the moment he thought that, and he bit his lip, looking away from her for a moment. None of this was her fault, and she… she wasn't bad, not really. And Sherlock loved her. So right now… she was one of the best things they could get.

"We'll wait," she replied calmly. "He has to make the first move. If we do it, it will break the balance. He has to be the one to decide what he needs, we can't do that for him, because the results will be dangerous."

John nodded slowly, and exhaled once more. Only now the whole bloody ordeal was actually beginning to dawn on him.

Mycroft. Gone. Dead, killed, actually – he was shot, right there, in the middle of the Square. And right in front of Sherlock's eyes.

So what did that make Sherlock now? Now that Mycroft had left him with all that tangled mess to sort out? John had an unpleasant feeling that this very much made his friend the next target.

* * *

**I hope you enjoyed! (As wrong as this may sound, given the contents...)**

**Like I said, this chapter was horridly hard to write, which is one of the reasons why it took so long... I'm so sorry about the delay!**

**Please review! Reviews are petrol in this fic's car :)**


	3. The Hunt

**Oh, my goodness! *faints* I am so, SO sorry again! School is an awful time-eater, and real life generally is a bother when writing fanfics. I'm so sorry for the horrible delay... in about a month I'll be starting my Xmas holiday, I hope to have more time then :D**

**So here's the next chapter... I had a bit of a block when writing it, so forgive me if the second half isn't really readable.**

**Please review! :D**

* * *

**3. The Hunt**

The shower was running too long, Irene determined after twenty minutes of uninterrupted sound coming from the bathroom. She got up from the sofa, somewhat glad that John had went down to deal with Mrs Hudson who saw on the news that someone had been shot at Trafalgar Square. She wouldn't want to be the one to break the news to the dear old lady – she became quite fond of her over time – but she knew that, in a way, staying in the flat with Sherlock was just as hard. She only hoped Mrs Hudson wouldn't come up anytime soon, at least not today – she preferred not to risk finding out what a doubtless conversation would set off inside Sherlock. He was in the state of extreme shell-shock, and the most immediate hours would be decisive as to the way in which he would come out of it. The manner in which he would exit the shock would set a trend for his entire coping mechanism, and in case of such a complex instance as Sherlock's personality and his relationship with Mycroft, it was a very dangerous process.

She opened the bathroom door and was flooded with a wave of visible steam hovering in the air, hot and thick. Sherlock was sitting in the bathtub, knees curled up to his chest, arms loosely wrapped around his legs, and the stream of water was falling onto the back of his neck. He was breathing slightly fast, and was occasionally shifting his position uncomfortably, frowning and turning his head away from something in one direction or the other.

"Sherlock," she closed the door and approached the tub. She couldn't tell if he had been crying – his face was wet, water dripping from his drenched hair, but a strange glaze in his eyes suggested that perhaps he let out a few instinctive tears.

"I can't get warm," he murmured with uncharacteristic sorrowfulness, and she saw that indeed he was shaking a little, despite the hot water falling on him.

"The feeling of cold is one of the things a shock causes," she turned to science and factuality. "And _that's_ why you get a blanket for it," she added, allowing a small smirk to play on her lips, and she was relieved when he turned to look at her, very briefly flashing the merest echo of a smirk as well.

She reached to the faucet and turned it off, and took his towel off the hanger. He got up and out of the tub and dried himself, while she brought him his pyjamas – he wasn't going anywhere today anymore, even if it was just 1 pm. He nodded and got dressed, all the while hushed and still clearly fighting a feeling of coolness in his body.

"The blood…" he murmured, rubbing the thumb of his left hand over the corresponding fingertips. "I can't wash it off. It's still there… still under my nails…"

"It's an illusion, Sherlock," she said firmly. "You know it."

"I know. But I can still feel it, almost see it."

"You have to go to sleep for at least five hours," she told him as they went through the living room and to his bedroom.

He shook his head as he sat on the bed.

"Too much adrenaline…" he hesitated, and looked up at her. His face took on an almost helpless, pleading expression, and she saw him touch his right arm almost subconsciously. "Could you…?" he let the unfinished request hang in the air for her to examine, appraise and pass judgment.

She nodded, since already when they reached home she had this idea and knew it would probably come to it. She went to the wardrobe where her suitcase was laid at the bottom, and she retrieved a secured syringe from it. Sherlock pulled up his sleeve, and she carefully injected him with a dose of the same drug she'd given him during their first meeting back in Belgravia.

He exhaled slowly and deeply, laying carefully back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the substance to work and send him to sleep. Irene dismantled the syringe and threw it in the bin beside his desk. She knew it could easily be considered as playing with fire to give a former addict a drug treatment in a heavily emotional situation, but she also knew that Sherlock was strong enough to reject any subconscious associations that could take him back to the psychological aspect of the addiction.

She sat on the edge of the bed, softly taking his pulse. Good, the effect was already setting in. Only he seemed to be uncomfortable, frowning, swallowing abnormally frequently and again was turning his head away from something every now and then. His thoughts, she easily concluded. The visual aspect of them especially.

"Look at me," he requested almost strongly, and she did, leaning over him so he could look up straight into her eyes. She knew what he was doing – occupying his visual focus so it wouldn't have room enough to accommodate his memories from the most recent events.

She watched the progression of the drug – it was quick, but not mercifully quick enough to wipe his consciousness out in one stage. His eyes fluttered closed, but he repeatedly opened them again, as if startled, anxiously focusing his vision on her face, seeking out her own gaze. She suspected it was his struggle against the images of Mycroft's assassination swimming into his mind as soon as his eyes were closed and while his awareness was not yet blacked out.

At last, he closed his massively hazy eyes and did not open them again. His breathing evened out into a lethargic pace characteristic for the drug's correct influence, and his muscles slackened, relaxing. It would do him good, she thought – the shock left him in a state of advanced tension, invisibly exhausting his body.

Irene got up from the bed and left, leaving the door half opened, in order to provide acoustic control of the situation. Just as she checked the news on her phone to see what was said of the Square incident, she heard the door open, and John wandered inside.

"Gave Mrs Hudson some valium… she should be fine," he informed her, and then noticed the bathroom door was opened, light turned off. "Where is he?"

Irene nodded towards the bedroom, and sure enough, a mere moment after the good doctor headed to it, she heard a quiet gasp and his slightly panicked voice as he turned to face her from the doorframe.

"Oh, Jesus, what's this, what's this?" he asked a little frantically. "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing non-consensual," she arched an eyebrow, not looking up from her phone as she scrolled through the news reports.

"You _drugged_ him!" John hissed.

"Obviously," she imitated Sherlock's sexy dismissive tone. Then she looked up at his friend. "He needs to sleep, John. And he wouldn't be able otherwise. He'll wake up in six or so hours, maybe a little more, given how exhausted his system must be."

"Yeah," John's face was crossed with immense weariness as he ran a hand through his hair and heaved a deep, tired sigh.

"Go home, John, come back when it's time for him to wake up," she recommended. "Because I'm warning you I won't be much of a conversation now."

"Oh?"

"I have some work to do," she cut the subject.

"Right… yes… Well, I'd better go anyway. I called Mary and told her I was fine, but she wants to see me anyway… Have to tell her what happened, and everything…"

It was adorable, she supposed, how a simple call wasn't enough to sate some people's anxiety, she thought as she watched John leave. Still, it wasn't the important matter now.

Having glanced over one last report (satisfactorily small amount of details and factuality) she locked her phone, put it away on top of Sherlock's dormant laptop, and climbed into her favourite chair, assuming a comfortable position, curling up and quieting her body out in preparation for a long, long thinking span.

It was three weeks since Mycroft first approached her and Sherlock with the issue of his approaching death. He divulged very few actual details, except for the important information that he had a mole among his closest co-workers, and that there was a role planned for him to play unknowingly. Only he noticed the fact of the mole's existence as such, which made him dangerous.

Why wasn't he killed at once then?

Two options – one, the mole needed him for something (information, access, actions, observation…) which Mycroft would share unaware, or needed to examine the extent of Mycroft's knowledge, or wanted to destroy what information Mycroft managed to gather.

Two – the mole _didn't know_ that Mycroft had found out, while Mycroft was aware that the course of actions he decided to assume would reveal his knowledge at some point, and then make him a target.

Mycroft didn't discover the mole's precise identity. He only knew it was one of his closest co-workers, and had managed to narrow down the options from there, but didn't share the results with them. He mentioned he'd tell Sherlock at some point, which, considering his apparently absolute conviction that he _would_ die, left Irene hopeful that he left Sherlock some messages.

The keys, of course. They were the keys to Mycroft's house, and handing them over to Sherlock meant he must have left something there for his brother to find. If he'd made any clues to be gathered after his death, they were at his house and nowhere else – Mycroft didn't own anything else to such immensely private and personal degree as he did his house.

Mycroft was killed at Trafalgar Square – he drove there after having received a text, and appeared to be waiting there for something or for someone, having dismissed his driver, which meant he was intending to be alone. They _had to_ see the text, get a hold of his phone. The hospital staff made an ID of the body by the documents Mycroft had on his person, and since there were no injuries to his face, it was unnecessary to verify with the next of kin. Which would put Mycroft's phone, along with other personal possessions he had on himself when taken, in the hospital's storage. They had to take those items, especially the phone, and see what was written in the text that – she was fairly sure – caused Mycroft to drive to the Square.

_House, phone_.

On his first death-related visit he mentioned it all was involved in and resulting from an illegal information trade and leaking. A few months earlier, Mycroft hired her to investigate the connections of a barrister named Norton and a Czech agent Janda. During that case he mentioned that he'd been after Janda since 2005, when the agent apparently leaked some information to the Americans who then interfered with a major drugs operation in England. Also, by the end of the case, she knew that what Mycroft really wanted Janda for, was not petty revenge or 'putting things right', but wanting to extract information from him, information regarding the black market intelligence trading. It was all most likely connected to the mole, since that too concerned the information leaks, only on a much larger scale.

Did it then mean that the information obtained from Janda pushed Mycroft's investigation onward? Where was Janda now? They needed to know what Mycroft learned from him.

_House, phone, Janda_.

On the last meeting, Mycroft brought Sherlock a book. _Towards Zero_ by Agatha Christie, she was familiar with the plot and philosophy of it, yet she doubted that Mycroft's only purpose in bringing it would be to make Sherlock treat his death as the _zero point_, the finale of a great and complicated plot. No, there had to be something else in it. The book was old, worn, and stirred a reaction from Sherlock – it must have been a sentimental connection, therefore she supposed it might have been something from Sherlock's childhood. Mycroft bringing it over must have been a message, he most likely left a clue in it, which she intended to investigate as soon as she was done analysing.

_Book, house, phone, Janda_.

Mycroft's last words – she didn't catch them too well, but she was assured Sherlock did. Whatever he was communicating, must have been a clue. Which meant he made a new discovery just recently, perhaps even on this very day, and didn't manage to put the information into any code he intended for Sherlock posthumously…

The realisation stiffened her muscles in a reflex tension, a rush of adrenaline spiking through her system due to rapid urgency. The investigation that would be led by the mole themselves – the first place to look would be Mycroft's house. Which meant they had to get there first and see whatever messages Mycroft had left…

_House, book, phone, Janda_.

The velocity and strength of the bullet impact ripping through Mycroft indicated a shot from a distance – a sniper, even. She'd been looking briefly for the bullet, but didn't manage to locate the hole, since ushering Sherlock out of the Square was much more urgent. Whoever killed Mycroft may or may have not noticed his presence there, hence she preferred not to increase the chances of the former. Sherlock already was a liability to the mole – Mycroft Holmes' younger brother, in continued contact with him, visited by him, and trained by him in deduction and intelligence gathering. The mole definitely was aware Sherlock would take on the job that Mycroft hadn't managed to finish. Which placed Sherlock directly in danger.

She got up from the chair and approached the desk, where she put the passports Mycroft obtained for them. She traced one booklet's edge with her finger, feeling its balance and trying to project it onto the massive case welling up in the horizon. Mycroft had asked her to decide for Sherlock when to retreat, when to flee. It showed the extent of his desperation – how backed up against an inexorable wall he must have been to _trust her_, with his brother's life, fate and safety.

Mycroft wasn't easily scared. Let alone led to desperation.

And the sheer strength of his latest desperation made her wonder if Sherlock should embark on this case at all.

* * *

_Mycroft Holmes was an exceptional man_

Delete, delete, delete.

_Mycroft Holmes was Sherlock's older brother until today_

Delete, delete, delete.

_Mycroft, we all_

Delete.

John released a strong, almost painful breath, and embraced his head with his hands, trying to soothe his thoughts. All of his – yeah, scarce – friends have been telling him he had a knack for writing, ever since he started his blog. Apparently, he was good with words – and he liked it, he thought he was good, too. He enjoyed typing up the blog and stringing together sentences.

Today, though, words didn't seem to do the job.

For some reason, it was even harder when Sherlock had jumped off Bart's. Then, at least, he had something to write – that Sherlock was _not_ a fraud, that Sherlock was _not_ a criminal, that he _did_ believe in Sherlock.

Now? Nothing. He didn't even know what to write. An epitaph? A letter? A note? A bloody obituary? He didn't know.

Mycroft was dead.

God, that hardly even seemed possible – he was such a… such a power figure. Obnoxious, omnipotent, always hovering in the picture, always in the middle of another back-and-forth with Sherlock… he was too powerful to die.

Which raised a question – what was so powerful that it killed him? What great, big, incomprehensible conspiracy had to evolve right in the middle of his work to make him die?

John looked up at the screen and the blinking cursor, determined.

_Mycroft, we will find them. Rest In Peace._

* * *

There was a sickening constriction in his chest, tighter than ever, yet familiar in nature – or rather, in all elements that built its complexity. Fear, anxiety, loss, emotional confusion – though experienced rarely, those sensations weren't unknown to him, but perhaps it was the first time he felt them united and completed with shock (Irene was right). But knowing each of them separately made the issue logically easier to broach.

Sherlock was laying on his back, palms flat and opened, pressed to the sheet beneath them, but not taut. He was forcing his thoughts to progress slowly, at a pace that usually would disgust him with its inefficiency, but which at present was medically advised, so to speak. His current thoughts needed to be processed singularly and allowed an adjustment period due to the highly emotional connotations of their nature. Simultaneously, he focused on controlling his breathing pattern, since his comprehension span was too extended to remain centred on one sole object for too long, even when governed by his mind into obedience.

Mycroft was dead. He easily assimilated the logical, cerebral aspect of this fact, but the surprisingly heavy emotional baggage it carried was much harder to shepherd into order.

It was, he thought, mostly the simple surprise of it – Mycroft wasn't a character anyone would associate with dying. It also was caused by the disturbance of such proportions in one of the most basic elements that defined his existence. One of the factors he identified himself by, was having Mycroft as an older brother – he had been there literally all of his hitherto life, whether wanted or not, and regardless of the drifting apart-and-together, instable nature of their relationship, Mycroft had been a permanent part of his identity. Losing him so relatively suddenly had pushed him into shock (he knew that logically, of course, but it didn't seem to help him exit the state).

There was a feeling alike to a spiral that pulled him inside itself with violent lack of control, slightly similar in mechanism to the time when he realised he was in love with Irene and was terrified by it, but different in nature – the panic and helplessness were much more sickening, with no potential benefits to balance the negativity.

Carefully and with levelled focus, he redirected all of his mental capacity to the core of his visual memory, and, remaining in the state of all-encompassed concentration, he allowed the memory from Trafalgar Square to play before his mind's eye. He stayed motionless, entirely engrossed in the horrifying display of vivid images, making it his goal to endure without a single flinch. He once more observed the bullet shooting forward from Mycroft's chest, jerking a trail of thick blood along with it through the air, and watched the people on the Square react in conflicted chaos. He once more heard Mycroft's cryptic words and watched the consciousness seep away from his eyes.

It was with annoyance that he came out of his recollection trance – due to the intense level of emotional shock, his visual capacity was restricted and the memories he retained were vague, blurred and incomplete in detail. Due to that, there was a chance of him missing several vital clues, but at the present moment he didn't feel at enough strength to attempt a reinforcement technique to restore some subconsciously harboured memories.

He opened his eyes, slowly adjusting his vision – it was perhaps an instinctive demand of his strained system that made him reckon that any sort of rush was undesired at present. Still proceeding slowly, he sat up on the bed and turned to face the alarm clock – 8:21 pm, which meant he'd slept about two hours above the expected duration of Irene's drug. It was most likely the result of immense exhaustion that his body had been put under due to the violent emotional and physical reactions that wrecked him after the incident. His mind, however, felt remarkably clearer than it had when he requested Irene to put him to artificial sleep. His thoughts were better reined in, not requiring so much of his focus to control them, thus allowing him to direct a larger ratio of his brainwork to other tasks than he was capable immediately after the incident.

With a deeper inhale and exhale, he slid off the bed and padded towards the door, satisfied with his perfect balance – apparently, the two additional hours of sleep allowed the unpleasant after-effects of the drug to wear off completely.

He found Irene sitting in his chair in the living room, deep in thought, but unlike him she was in the habit of registering everything around her simultaneously, therefore she met his eyes as soon as they landed on her. There was a guarded inquisitiveness in her gaze, an almost medical sort of assessment, and it pacified him further, due to her lack of overly emotional load of compassion and worry. She always seemed to know what was important to him and what wasn't, as well as what caused which reaction in him, what behaviour he found easy and which constraining or repelling. Or, to put it in her words, she knew what he liked.

She didn't ask him the dull 'How are you feeling?' or anything equally mundane. Instead, she judged the answer on her own by briefly scrutinising him, and then gave a barely perceptible nod, apparently to herself, because he couldn't determine its meaning with a 100% certainty.

"It's good you're up," she informed him. "We need to go to Mycroft's house. We have to be there first…"

Her words ignited logical thinking in him once more. A quick chain of deductive reasoning surged through his head, featuring in the factors of investigation into Mycroft's death and the mole's involvement with the investigative organs, and he nodded, turning around to go back into the bedroom and quickly get dressed.

Once he returned to the living room, he found Irene also dressed to go out, holding Mycroft's keys in one hand, and a small carton of apple juice with a straw in the other.

"Sugar," she explained shortly and simply, putting the latter in his hand. "Drink it even if you throw up again afterwards."

He managed not to.

* * *

Once again, the cab ride presented nothing relevant, therefore he didn't pay any attention to it, utilising the time to analyse the current situation and put together a loose plan of action for the upcoming days - containing options to alternate due to possible variables, which would depend on what they would find in Mycroft's house.

He'd never had keys to it. There wasn't any need, since he didn't visit, and he didn't have any interest in the house during the periods of his brother's absence. So far as he knew, the only person to have a complete set of keys to the house, other than Mycroft, was his PA, Anthea. With whom they would also have to talk.

It was most likely (almost certainly) the emotional load of the situation that made the simple action of turning keys in the locks seem strangely memorable and unusual. He felt somewhat out of his comfort zone, the event registering more thoroughly than required – it was of no relevance to the case at hand, it did not matter, and yet his fingers registered every single resonance that the grinding key caused in the lock.

He pulled the door open, revealing the dark hall – no lights were on in the house, as they both noticed upon disembarking the cab, and in the falling night it greatly restricted the visibility inside the building. Sherlock went ahead first, tentatively trying to see through the darkness and attempting to deduce the location of the light switch, brushing his fingertips along the wall. Beside him, he could hear Irene's steady breathing, and briefly marvelled at his thorough knowledge of her as he realised that he was able to catch a hint of tension and pensiveness solely by her breathing pattern.

There was a shift of texture under his sensitive fingertips, and he frowned, trailing his touch along a suddenly slightly smoother layer on the wall, unable to make out its nature, until it suddenly ended, returned again, and ended once more. The tip of his right shoe knocked gently against some item that promptly rolled away from him in the darkness with a quiet rattle of metal, adding more puzzlement to the situation. He picked up a strange scent that he couldn't quite determine – it was probably a mixture of several smells combined, most of them carrying an… _industrial_ hint.

At last, his hand encountered the light switch, close to the exit from the hall – he could see the dim shapes of windows in the living room looming somewhere ahead of him. He pressed the small surface, light instantly pooling over the expansive room ahead of them.

Beside him, Irene gasped in unrestrained shock, and he too stared, immobile for a long moment, as they surveyed the drastic scenery in the living room.

As if in a fit of madness and fury, the entire room – the entire house, it seemed – was littered with mess and destruction. The curtains were ripped off, the rug pushed away and piled under one of the walls, the wallpapers torn and slit with what must have been either scissors or a dull knife, the furniture thrown around the vicinity, some chairs broken, the contents of the fireplace expelled onto the floor, papers and books and files seemingly tossed around and landed at random, some ripped to shreds.

And what his foot prodded, had been a small tin of white wall paint. And in the very middle of the room, on the glossy hardwood floor, a large word was painted across the boards in jagged, swept letters.

_SHERLOCK_

It was Mycroft's handwriting – was Sherlock's first thought as his mind whirred into analytic action. He was able to ascertain that even despite the scale of the writing as well as the capitalised letters. Largely because he knew Mycroft's writing very well, and mostly because for three years in a row, when he was six, seven and eight years old, on Easter Mycroft created an Easter Egg hunt for him in their family house, a much more elaborate and complex version of what some children received from their parents. It was supposed to train his deductive thinking, since every egg was hidden in logical relation to the previous one, yet simultaneously no step could be omitted – when searching for eggs 1, 2 and 3 he couldn't find 3 basing on his knowledge of 1. And the start of each such hunt was marked with a post-it on which, in capitalised letters, Mycroft wrote SHERLOCK…

"Mycroft did this," he spoke at last, tearing his eyes away from his name painted across the floor. "I'm sure. He's left a hunt for me, a hunt for clues..."

"And destroyed everything around to hide them from anyone undesired," Irene added, nodding contemplatively, her eyes sharp with a light of intense thinking and appreciation. "Create an artificial chaos… Clever."

"And he definitely knew he was going to die," Sherlock's own voice sounded somewhat strange to him, but he discarded the thought as irrelevant. His words, however, sparked another recognition in his brain. He blamed the tardiness on the residual effects of the drug. "And he will have left clues for you, too…"

Irene seemed surprised when she turned to face him, one elegant eyebrow arched in an open question and non-jesting dubiousness, her sharp eyes regarding him thoroughly.

"On his visits he repeatedly addressed us _both_, he kept mentioning _both of us_ – he meant for you to come here as well, he left here something that either is meant for you, or something that he perhaps decided I might not catch due to differences in mine and his reasoning, so he intended you to be here to make sure all of his messages are read," he explained with a frown.

After a brief moment of contemplation, Irene gave a small nod, and turned to survey the room again, Sherlock following suit. There was a familiar hum of brainwork welling up in the back of his head, and he welcomed the soothing effect of normalising that it had on him, returning him a step closer to his usual reality. For now, the emotional idea of Mycroft's death had to be moved aside in order to allow as much of his capacity as possible to be channelled into gathering Mycroft's clues in the race against the mole and the official investigation. Once he returns home, he will be free to process those emotions by succumbing to them for a controlled period of time, experience them and expel them from his system. But for now, they needed to be suppressed.

Following his experience from the past, he looked towards the 'K' in SHERLOCK – the direction of its slightly extended upper diagonal appendage always indicated where he should turn first on his hunts, and this time was no exception. Twenty eight years later, Mycroft recalled the three annual games just as perfectly as he did, and left the customary clue. The 'K' pointed him towards Mycroft's desk, where he promptly headed, in his peripheral vision noting Irene had moved to do her own search, heading to other parts of the house.

Mycroft's desk was a dramatic reversal of its usual state of immaculate order. The lamp had been knocked off, ragged papers littered the surface, many of them burnt with cigarette stubs put out on them, mixing with remnants of a smashed terracotta ornament, shattered drink glass, spilt alcohol (whiskey, neat), innards of a taken-apart digital camera (sans the memory card), blots of ink from a fountain pen (fallen onto the surface with great velocity and sharp angle, therefore caused by series of enraged movements), an overfilled ashtray and a Bible with a few pages of the Old Testament torn out.

Frowning, he approached the ashtray to take it under scrutiny. At first glance he already noticed two vital facts – a) there were at least several different kinds of ash in it, and b) there were no cigarette stubs whatsoever. Carefully lifting the stone dish, he examined the ash – the majority of it came in small clusters, characteristic for remainders of cigarettes for people who flicked off their ash in larger intervals of time, thus producing clusters rather than mere flakes at the ends of their cigarettes as it smoked out. It was Mycroft's way of smoking.

The lack of stubs was intriguing and unusual, combined with the sheer amount of ash and variety of brands – Mycroft was intermediate persevering in his attempts at quitting, and he only ever smoked the Dunhills if he did.

_422 kinds of tobacco ash_…

The elucidation was instant and encompassing, infiltrating his brain and adjusting his thinking strategies and mechanics to the prism moved forward by the new discovery.

"Mycroft was trying to use my language!" he called out informatively as he carefully, with steady hands lifted the ashtray off the desk and examined even closer, before looking around the demolished room, a memory of an empty file box humming in his mind in response to a current requirement. "He left clues tying in to my interests, my ways of thinking!"

He located the box – neat, brown cardboard, size slightly bigger than an average file, empty, lid nearby. With his foot, he pushed the lid closer to the box, and placed the ashtray on it, designating the spot where they would gather the discovered clues.

"I know," Irene's voice reached him from the direction of Mycroft's dining room. "I found your sonata," she emerged, holding the paper sheets.

"Your," Sherlock corrected, a strange flicker of prideful, pleased emotion passing through his system. It was The Woman's sonata, and for a yet unexamined reason he took a strange pleasure in assigning the ownership of a work he created, to Irene.

He reached out, taking the sheet music, and frowned as his eyes scanned down the pages – numerous notes were crossed out, altered or switched in order, and already by reading them his mind was puzzled by the absolutely incomprehensible, butchered melody that the changed transcript created.

"I know, darling," Irene responded to whatever expression must have passed his face. "Don't you worry, you'll rewrite your working copy again."

The hint of teasing in her voice was soothing, offering further emotional distance from the situation, and he glanced at her, knowing she would easily read the message from his eyes, without necessitating him to transmit it verbally. After maintaining a brief contact, her eyes dipped to examine the ashtray, and the elegant eyebrows arched up.

"422 kinds of tobacco ash," she spoke in a voice of intense musing and appreciation. "Clever. No stubs in the bin either?"

"The bin is empty and in the fireplace," he replied, dropping the maltreated sonata into the box. "Now, the ashtray was here…" he moved towards the desk again, positioning himself as close to the corner previously occupied by the item as possible. "Its front was turned there…" he looked in the direction that the ashtray's front used to face, and through the door and angle of the corridor he saw the stairs leading up to Mycroft's bedroom.

Without hesitation he followed the trail, carefully examining the stairs in case of any clues, but the search was unproductive. The bedroom was in a state of mayhem corresponding with the rest of the house. The bed had been torn and gutted, the covers, sheets and pillows ripped and spread around the room, one window broken, _from the outside_, as evidenced by pieces of glass being inside the room, wallpapers torn off at random, and a variety of other items littering the floor and furniture.

He noticed it immediately, the sight connecting with his extreme visual memory – a few pages torn from the Bible he'd seen on Mycroft's desk. They lay on top of a small, crooked pile on a chair, and he picked it up. The Bible passage told of the original sin and the exile from Eden. Underneath was a thin, old book about Joan of Arc. Next Shakespeare's _Taming of the Shrew_, followed by a photograph of planet Venus, and…

"Well, this certainly set the fire to my ovaries," Irene's saucily amused voice cut into his analysis.

Even for her, it was an unusual statement, therefore he promptly whipped round to see what caused it.

With a smirk, Irene was holding up a small print of an old photo, and as he scrutinised the slightly blurred image, he violently fought back a groan. His two year old self was the subject, with a mass of black curls, sitting on the ground with a particularly vicious scowl, a crazed look in his eyes, and an unintelligible piece of paper in his mouth.

"Care to explain?" Irene's voice prompted with another arch of an eyebrow, her eyes glinting at him in an expression that reaffirmed his suspicion he would sooner or later have to divulge, and later would only mean a prolonged torture.

"I was two," he started off in a defensive tone, and quickly tried to amend that strategic mistake. "My teeth were growing, and like all children in that phase, I had the need to chew, apparently. This photo was taken by a very furious, eleven year old Mycroft who wanted to prove to our Mother that I indeed ate his homework," he admitted wryly, glaring at Irene's not particularly withheld amusement.

She examined the photo again, a predatory smile playing about her lips.

"My, my, what a precious baby you were… well, not to worry you, darling, but now I want one of those," she smirked at him, purposefully pocketing the photo, much to his chagrin. "Now, what do you have here?"

Quickly, Sherlock wrenched his mind away from the already multiple plans of repossessing the photo before Irene showed it to John, which in turn would locate it quickly on John's blog. He displayed the papers in his hands.

"And a cigarette stub," he added. "Original sin, Joan of Arc, _Taming of the Shrew_, planet Venus… the message seems fairly clear – woman. _The Woman_," he fixed her with a direct look. "The cigarette stub probably refers to the ashtray. And yet the ashtray is addressed distinctly to me. Perhaps there is a message for both of us, as I mentioned before."

Irene was studying the papers with a pensive frown, her eyes shrewdly running over the details.

"No… I think this might mean something else entirely," she finally said slowly. "We'll have to think about this back… at the flat," she finished after a brief hesitation as she apparently altered her words selection at the last moment. "For now – any more clues here?"

He shot her an innocently surprised look, at which she donned on an adoringly patronising smirk.

"Oh, sweetheart, it's so very obvious you follow a hunt in a pattern he left you…"

The corners of his lips twitched into the briefest smile.

"There's a doormat at the door," he pointed. "It means the next clue is in the hall."

Retracing their steps, they soon returned to the hall, where Irene found an umbrella – a spare one, apparently. The handle had been tampered with, and since there was no other clue material, they took it, planning to dismantle it back at 221 B to see if anything was inside it. There also were no further instructions left for Sherlock, indicating the hunt to be over. The fact of leading them towards the door was also consistent with that, additionally implying that perhaps Mycroft wanted them to leave the house as quickly as possible.

However, he decided against it, wanting to search for another kind of clues – ones that Mycroft might have left unwittingly and unintentionally.

* * *

It had never before happened to him to fall asleep on the case, therefore Sherlock was surprised to come awake. His mind surged into work with only a marginal haze, and within the timeframe of a second, he comprehended the basic statements – it was daytime (cloudy, chances of rain), he fell asleep browsing all the documents on Mycroft's laptop, lying on the rug, and his slumber was a result of the drug's after-effects, possibly with the addition of emotional inconsistency that caused him an effort to control.

The last fact was the sound of someone attempting to open the front door. Standing up from the rug, he met Irene's gaze as she emerged into the living room, movements quiet, and one exchange of looks was enough to comprehend they both knew who was on the other side of the door. Once more, the possibilities were limited and outcome predictable – the investigators into Mycroft's death, no doubt falling under the mole in a chain of command.

He cleared his throat to remove any possible sleepiness from his voice and smoothed his shirt, before heading for the door and opening it.

The three suit-wearing men on the other side seemed minimally surprised at first, clearly having not expected any presence, which confirmed that he and Irene were indeed first to go through Mycroft's possessions after his death. But now their success was placed under a threat of destruction – should the agents take away all that they managed to find…

"May I help you?" Sherlock decided to opt for a surprising selection of words, hoping to prolong the small puzzlement of the men, therefore standing at least a small advantage.

"We're investigating the death of Mycroft Holmes," the forefront man produced a badge that Sherlock didn't even grace with a look. "We have a warrant for search and repossession of the house and its contents, should they prove vital to the investigation. Please, step aside, sir."

Sherlock's mind whirred with redoubled energy, the document in his hands working like an incentive, and within a split second he devised the new strategy, seeing Mycroft's name written in the warrant. A loophole…

"I'm sorry, as you said, Mycroft Holmes is dead," he replied. "Which means the ownership of the house and items in it is transferred to the person designated in his will. I am my brother's legal and natural heir, therefore all of it now belongs _Sherlock_ Holmes, not _Mycroft_ Holmes. Please return with an appropriate warrant, until then – please step off my property," he dictated simply, and shut the door for reinforced effect. Mycroft had always said he had a penchant for drama.

The moment he heard the initially puzzled men walk away, no doubt to settle the matter as fast as possible (which was the most reasonable solution in their situation, which in turn suggested they were not as stupid as it would be desired), he turned to face Irene, urgency in his eyes.

"We need to leave. Now."

She already was packing all their findings into the box (the ashtray on top of the pile), while he heaved the other one, into which they gathered other items they deemed helpful – mostly paper files, along with Mycroft's laptop. The umbrella, for size reasons, was carried separately, hanging off Sherlock's forearm by the curved handle. None of the uniformed men remained outside, which again showed their logical thinking – it would be pointless, since they had no power to stop Sherlock from carrying out possessions that (for the moment) were legally his, and all of them knew where he lived.

There wasn't a cab in sight, therefore Irene phoned for one after they walked two streets away from the house, to prevent the boxes being taken away from them in case of the men's return. The urgency was dying down, moulding into simple impatience. The white-grey, monotonous, fog-like clouds seemed to be hanging lower and lower, the air gaining a cool, damp scent of forthcoming rain. Three minutes later, a sticky drizzle began floating through the air.

Over his and Irene's heads, Sherlock opened Mycroft's black umbrella.

* * *

**There. Hope you liked the umbrella final scene.**

**Anyway, the next chapter has a lot of thinking, and some more characters appear - Lestrade and Molly among others. I hope to write it faster than this one, I really hope!**

**Reviews are petrol :D**


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